Astronomers in India say their discovery of a massive galaxy from when the Universe was only 1.5 billion years old challenges our understanding of how galaxies were formed in the early period after the Big Bang.
Simply put, if the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, it means we're seeing a galaxy from 12 billion years ago when the cosmos was only one-tenth of its current age.
Scientists say galaxies that formed so early were found to be mostly irregular in shape and chaotic.
But when researchers Rashi Jain and Yogesh Wadadekar used James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to peer into the Universe's early past, they spied a "fully-formed spiral galaxy - a massive, beautifully structured cosmic pinwheel".
Their research was published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, a leading European journal, in November.
