New research from scientists using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope discovered six massive, mature 'candidate galaxies' in the early universe, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on Wednesday.
Because of the galaxies' age and massiveness, the team's discovery conflicts with 99% of existing models for the origins of the universe."We looked into the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find," Leja said."It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question.
"A spectrum will immediately tell us whether or not these things are real. ... It will show us how big they are how far away they are," Leja said. Leja added that, while the data indicates the discovered objects are galaxies, there's also a possibility of a few of them being obscured supermassive black holes.Regardless of the outcomes, the amount of mass that the team found"means that the known mass in stars at this period of our universe is up to 100 times greater than we had previously thought," Leja said. "Even if we cut the sample in half, this is still an astounding change.
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