James Webb Telescope Unveils Zhúlóng: The Milky Way’s Lost ‘Twin’ From the Dawn of Time!

Amazing news from the cosmos! The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has spotted a galaxy that looks like the Milky Way’s ancient sibling. This discovery could change how we understand the early universe.

In stunning new images, astronomers observed this galaxy, named Zhúlóng, shining brightly just one billion years after the Big Bang. Back then, the universe was about 14% of its current age. Zhúlóng has a recognizable structure: an old star bulge and two vibrant spiral arms, making it the most distant “twin” of our galaxy ever found.

What makes Zhúlóng really exciting? It shouldn’t have formed so quickly, according to our current theories that suggest large galaxies take billions of years to develop from smaller ones. This discovery raises important questions about our understanding of galaxy formation.

Mengyuan Xiao, the lead researcher from the University of Geneva, shared his excitement: “Zhúlóng stands out for how closely it resembles the Milky Way in shape, size, and stellar mass.” This galaxy’s star-forming disk spans about 60,000 light-years across—smaller than the Milky Way’s 100,000-light-year length—but it boasts around 100 billion solar masses compared to our galaxy’s 1.5 trillion.

Zhúlóng is remarkable because it formed over a billion years before another similar galaxy, Ceers-2112, which JWST discovered in 2023. This highlights how less common massive galaxies were in the early universe.

The galaxy was found almost by accident during PANORAMIC, a survey designed to study distant objects in a unique observational mode. This approach allows JWST to observe multiple regions of space simultaneously—a game-changer for mapping the sky and finding rare galaxies.

These findings add to the growing list of discoveries from JWST that challenge existing views of the cosmos. Past findings show larger galaxies and supermassive black holes forming too quickly for known theories to explain. It seems Zhúlóng’s rapid growth is particularly perplexing, as scientists believed the Milky Way took billions more years to reach a similar stage.

The research team believes follow-up observations using JWST and ground-based telescopes will help uncover more about this fascinating galaxy. As astronomer Pascal Oesch noted, these discoveries are reshaping our understanding of the universe and its timeline.

In summary, the discovery of Zhúlóng could be a key piece in understanding how galaxies formed in the early universe. With every new finding, we are slowly piecing together the grand story of cosmic evolution.

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