James Webb has discovered a galaxy “too distant” that turns everything we know about it on its head.

Being able to observe very distant objects is quite interesting because we can have an idea of ​​what they were like when they were born. This is one of the functions James Webb, space telescopes’ newest rock star. However, he had just made a very interesting discovery, discovering galaxy far away which, despite this, looks much older than it should be based on the current knowledge of astrophysicists.

This means that, given what is known today about the physics of the birth of galaxies, that very distant galaxy shouldn’t exist. There’s no point in being so big, so old and so far away.

The scientists responsible for their discovery, recently published in Nature, explained in a statement that they have been monitoring this galaxy for 7 years. They used two of the largest telescopes on Earth: Keck and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), but they were not enough for a deeper analysis of this object. It would have to wait for something as new as James Webb to provide information that would turn on its head what scientists had previously known about galaxies.

Why is the discovery of this distant galaxy so rare?

When we look at an object very far away, we see not what it looks like now, but what it looked like. billions of years ago. This is because it is necessary for its light to reach us. Being at such a distance, the light reaching us is not just emanating, but was emitted a long time ago when the object was much younger.

In the case of this distant galaxy called ZF-UDS-7329its light is known to come slowly 11.5 billion years. However, thanks to infrared measurements by James Webb, it was possible to notice that its stellar population was already present. 1.5 billion years ago.

This stellar population is huge. In fact, it is estimated that the mass of all its stars is at least twice the size of our Milky Way. And this is where the inconsistencies begin. It took our galaxy billions of years to develop such a stellar population. It will take a lot more to achieve twice the weight. This indicates that this distant galaxy was actually more than 1.5 billion years old when its light went to James Webb. Or that he is somehow following an unknown training method that allows him to grow in size much faster than normal. Whatever the answer, it challenges the known science of galaxy formation.

Question about dark matter

Dark matter is one of science’s greatest mysteries. This is estimated to be approximately 27% of matter in the Universe, but it is not capable of emitting electromagnetic radiation of any type. It also does not interact with any type of nearby radiation. This makes it a mystery to telescopes as they cannot detect it.

Although little is known about it, dark matter is believed to play a fundamental role in evolution of galaxies. Given current knowledge of these star formations, it is speculated that in the rare event discovered by James Webb, enough dark matter could not have accumulated to give rise to such a large galaxy in such a short time.

Thus, two errors are possible. Or those dark matter clusters They happen differently than previously thought, or there is something about the formation of galaxies that eludes the scientists who study them.

In fact, while this is particularly unusual, it is not the first rarity of its type to be discovered. Continued research in this direction could change known science. Dark matter again appears a little darker in the eyes of those who study it, but that makes this new discovery especially interesting.