Scientists Discover a Galaxy That Challenges Current Knowledge About the Cosmos
Rebel-25 galaxy. X/ @almaobs
October 7, 2024 Hour: 10:56 am
The early galaxy REBELS-25 has a structure that is as orderly as modern galaxies.
On Monday, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) confirmed that a team of researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), discovered a galaxy that challenges existing knowledge about the formation of these systems.
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The newly discovered galaxy, named REBELS-25, has a structure that is “as orderly” as modern galaxies, despite reflecting what the universe was like when it was only 700 million years old.
Considered an “early galaxy,” these types of galaxies typically appear more chaotic, but REBELS-25 is similar in shape to the Milky Way, characterized by a rotating disk with well-defined structures, such as spiral arms. In the scientific community, it has generally been thought that these structures are largely the result of billions of years of evolution.
“Current theories suggest that for a galaxy to be as orderly as our own Milky Way, billions of years must have passed,” said ESO, emphasizing that the detection of REBELS-25 “challenges that timeline.”
“Seeing a galaxy with such similarities to our own Milky Way, which is strongly dominated by rotation, challenges our understanding of how quickly galaxies in the early universe evolve into the orderly galaxies we see in the cosmos today,” said Lucie Rowland, the lead author of the discovery.
Jacqueline Hodge, an astronomer at Leiden University (Netherlands) and also a co-author of the study on REBELS-25, pointed out that until now, based on our understanding of galaxy formation, “we expect most early galaxies to be small and look like train wrecks.” The ESO researchers had previously discovered the presence of REBELS-25 thanks to ALMA, but the images they had of it were not as revealing as those they now have of this early galaxy.
ALMA, the largest instrument of its kind in the world, located at an altitude of 5,000 meters in the Chilean Atacama Desert, has been operational for just over a decade. In that time, it has uncovered many secrets of the cosmos and contributed to producing the first-ever photograph of a black hole.
teleSUR/JF Source: EFE