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The galaxy, named Alaknanda (named after a river in the Himalayas), has a classic ‘grand-design’ spiral morphology with a brilliant center bulge surrounded by star-forming clusters and two symmetrical spiral arms. This structure is exactly similar to our galaxy.
What makes Alaknanda unique is its unexpectedly mature appearance for its age. According to traditional beliefs, galaxies would be disorganized, dense, and unstable during the early stages of the universe.
Instead, Alaknanda’s spiral arms and ordered disk imply that massive, disk-dominated spiral galaxies may have arisen much earlier than originally thought.
The study estimates that Alaknanda has a diameter of about 30,000 light years and has accumulated stellar mass equivalent to billions of suns. Its star-formation rate, or the rate at which new stars are formed, is many times the galaxy’s current speed, suggesting a rapid and active phase of early cosmic fusion.
except for JWSTThe discovery was made possible by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, due to the strong infrared vision. The giant foreground cluster Abell 2744, also known as the ‘Pandora Cluster’, allowed light from the galaxy to be bent and amplified, making Alaknanda large and bright enough for close inspection.
The scientists behind the discovery, Rashi Jain and Yogesh Vadadekar, described the moment of discovery as ‘unexpected’. According to Jain, out of more than 70,000 objects studied, Alaknanda was the only system that had a distinctive spiral shape.
“This galaxy appears very similar to our own galaxy as it existed when the universe was only 10% of its current age,” Jain told the media.
“It is quite unexpected to find such a well-formed spiral galaxy at this early stage. It tells us that complex structures in our universe were being formed much earlier than we imagined,” he said.
The Galaxy Alaknanda challenges long-standing theories of galaxy formation, which held that stable spiral galaxies could only form after billions of years of comparatively quiet cosmic evolution.
According to the NCRA-TIFR team, further monitoring is scheduled. They intend to determine precisely how such a galaxy evolved so rapidly by examining the movements of stars and gas within Alaknanda using spectroscopic data. JWST (And potentially other telescopes such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, ALMA).
Since its launch in December 2021, JWST has generated data that has revolutionized our knowledge of the universe. This involves identifying some of the earliest galaxies in the universe, which formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
(edited by : Sudarshan Mani,