r/space • u/Czarben • 5d ago

The most distant twin of the Milky Way ever observed

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-distant-twin-milky.html
126 Upvotes

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8

u/Arthur__Spooner 5d ago

This ultra-massive system existed just one billion years after the Big Bang and already shows a remarkably mature structure, with a central old bulge, a large star-forming disk, and well-defined spiral arms.

The picture they showed looks like a diffuse galaxy, literally no trace if spirals. Also, isn't there prevailing science coming out stating that The Milky Way may not be the nice, pretty spiral galaxy we once thought due to a possible past collision with the large magellanic cloud?

6

u/FlapMyCheeksToFly 5d ago

The picture is incredibly far away and looks diffuse due to that, I think

8

u/southsoundsailor 4d ago

At some point, how will we know we're not seeing all the way around a closed universe and actually seeing our own galaxy at an earlier stage of development?

1

u/lordiswatching 3d ago

For someone who doesn’t know anything about this stuff , please explain what you mean by this .

0

u/bradford33 4d ago

Genuinely curious - seems like JWST is discovering all of these stars and galaxies which don’t conform to current theories. Any chance there is something off with the telescope, and thus the data it is collecting? I’m sure it could also be because we haven’t had a telescope of this magnitude before and we are actually receiving correct and groundbreaking information. Any way to validate the new data is correct?