According to UC Riverside postdoctoral researcher Alexander de la Vega, “This galaxy, named ceers-2112, formed soon after the Big Bang.”…
According to observed data, astronomers are utilizing the powerful James Webb Space Telescope to capture the most distant barred spiral galaxy akin to the Milky Way.
It was thought that barred spiral galaxies like the Milky Way were undetected before the cosmos. It is likely 13.8 billion years old and half its current age.
According to UC Riverside postdoctoral researcher Alexander de la Vega, “This galaxy, named ceers-2112, formed soon after the Big Bang.”
He remarked, “Ceers-2112 suggests early cosmic galaxies were as orderly as the Milky Way. This is remarkable because early galaxies were chaotic and few had structures like the Milky Way.
The study appeared in Nature. Central to Ceers-2112 is a bar.
Stars in galaxies form a galactic bar, according to De la Vega. Galactic bars resemble candy bars.
Bars are unusual in non-spiral galaxies, he added.
De la Vega: “Spiral galaxies have almost all bars.”
It said, “The bar in ceers-2112 suggests that galaxies matured and became ordered much faster than we previously thought, which means some aspects of our theories of galaxy formation and evolution need revision.”
Astronomers previously understood that galaxies needed billions of years to become organized enough to form bars.
“The discovery of ceers-2112 shows that it can happen in only a fraction of that time, in about one billion years or less,” stated de la Vega.
When the cosmos was young, galaxies were chaotic and unstable. Early galaxies were supposed to be unable to create or maintain bars.
Astronomy may modify at least two things after the finding of ceers-2112.
“First, theoretical models of galaxy formation and evolution will need to account for some galaxies becoming stable enough to host bars very early in the universe’s history,” stated de la Vega.
“Second, the discovery of ceers-2112 demonstrates that structures like bars can be detected when the universe was very young.”
Conclusion
The Milky Way-like Ceers-2112 is the furthest barred spiral galaxy identified by astronomers. The galaxy, thought to be 13.8 billion years old, originated soon after the Big Bang and reveals that early galaxies might be as organized as the Milky Way. The Nature discovery shows that galaxies matured and became organized faster than previously anticipated, prompting revisions to galaxy formation and evolution models. The discovery of Ceers-2112 will change two aspects of astronomy: theoretical models of galaxy formation and evolution will need to account for some galaxies becoming stable enough to host bars early in the universe’s history, and structures like bars can be detected early on.
