They discover a galaxy similar to the Milky Way that would have formed 11.7 billion years ago

2023-11-08 18:33:50

Updated Wednesday, November 8, 2023 – 17:33

The discovery dismantles the conception that the structure of spiral galaxies would not have been consolidated until the universe reached half its current age (less than 7 billion years).

Artistic representation of the barred spiral galaxy ceers-2112Luca Costantin (CAB/CSIC-INTA)Space The Webb telescope identifies dozens of binary planets the size of Jupiter floating without a star in the Orion Nebula The Ring Nebula Seen like never before: the new images from the James Webb telescope

The revolution that the observations of the James Webb telescope have brought about for the science of the Cosmos is beginning to bear fruit: a team of researchers led by the Center for Astrobiology (CAB) has discovered the most distant galaxy similar to the Milky Way of those observed until now. now, revealing that The Universe was more organized than thought from an early era.

The discovery, published this Wednesday by Nature magazine, shows a galaxy that forms a spiral around a bar of stars – similar to the image of the Milky Way – that would have formed 11.7 billion years agowhen the universe was only 2.1 billion years old, 15% of its current age, which is estimated at 13.8 billion years.

The discovery of ‘ceers-2112’the scientific name that researchers have given to the newly found galaxy, dismantles the conception that the structure of spiral galaxies, like the Milky Way, would not have been consolidated until the universe reached half its current age (some time ago). less than 7,000 million years ago).

“Our study reveals that galaxies similar to the Milky Way already existed 11.7 billion years ago,” one of the main authors explained in an interview with EFE. Luca Constantineresearcher at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) at the CAB in Madrid.

Costantin has detailed that ‘ceers-2112’ is considered a barred spiral galaxy “because it presents a kind of spiral arms that rotate around a central area, where there is a bar-shaped structure of stars. And the most peculiar thing is that the galaxy has the same number of stars that at this moment in the universe our galaxy had”.

He 70% of the galaxies known so far in the nearby universe They have that spiral structure.

The observation of ‘ceers-2112’, the researcher has stressed, has been possible thanks to “the extraordinary capabilities” of the James Webb space telescope, whose technology and instrumentation have allowed discover and study in detail the morphology of distant galaxies like this one.

Specifically, the scientific data was taken during telescope observations in a region of the sky located between the constellations of the Ursa Major and the Mountain Dog.

And this is just the beginning. Costantin has advanced: “We have ahead between 8 and 10 years of observations of this telescope that will allow the discovery of new galaxies and a better understanding of the physical processes that occurred in the first phase of the Universe’s existence.”

The following movements will therefore involve continuing to study the galaxy found to decipher its chemical composition and understand it better.

“Investigating how galaxies acquire the structure that characterizes them today is essential to understand the processes of formation and evolution of the Universe,” added another of the authors, Cristina Cabelloresearcher at the Institute of Particle Physics and the Cosmos of the Complutense University of Madrid.

“The extraordinary observational work described and interpreted in this study identifies the unexpected existence of highly organized and gravitationally bound matter in the form of a barred galaxy, which contains about 4 billion solar masses at a time when the Universe was only 2,000 million years old,” he told EFE. Juan Prez-Mercaderprincipal investigator in Physics applied to Astrophysics and Cosmology at Harvard University.

Dark matter and barynic matter

Pérez-Mercader, founder and first director of the CAB, explained that we are dealing with research “whose observations and cutting-edge quantitative interpretation suggest that we still have much to learn about the evolution of the Universe, and about the history of the dark matter and its interaction with barynic matter (ordinary matter that makes up living beings, planets and stars.) to understand the processes that must have occurred to give rise to a galaxy like this.”

This discovery indicates “the presence of a much faster evolution of what is expected from this galaxy, which will probably be the first observed of its kind, and will give much to study to make sense of it and include it within our understanding of the early history and the evolution towards puberty of the Universe,” he added.

For the founder of the CAB, this discovery is “a triumph for a new generation of Cosmos scientists who can now make and lead on an international scale a “magnificent scientific research from Spain.”

In this research project they have participated 33 researchers belonging to 29 institutions from 8 countries, among the affiliated Spanish institutions, in addition to the CAB, are the Complutense universities of Madrid, La Laguna, Valladolid and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands.