James Webb telescope finds ancient galaxy larger than our Milky Way, and it's threatening to upend cosmology

The James Webb Space Telescope has found a galaxy in the early universe that's so massive, it shouldn't exist, posing a"significant challenge" to the standard model of cosmology, according to the study authors.

Light travels at a fixed speed through the vacuum of space, so the deeper we look into the universe, the more remote light we intercept and the further back in time we see. This is what enabled the researchers to use JWST to spot ZF-UDS-7329 roughly 11.5 billion years in the past. Current theories suggest that halos of dark matter combined with gas to form the first seedlings of galaxies. After 1 billion to 2 billion years of the universe's life, the early protogalaxies then reached adolescence, forming into dwarf galaxies that began devouring one another to grow into ones like our own.

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Very Large Telescope snaps gorgeous shot of Milky Way's star-studded core (photo)Samantha Mathewson joined Space.com as an intern in the summer of 2016. She received a B.A. in Journalism and Environmental Science at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut. Previously, her work has been published in Nature World News.
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