An international team of astronomers have discovered a remarkably clumpy rotating galaxy that existed just 900 million years after the Big Bang, shedding new light on how galaxies grew and evolved in the early Universe.
Appearing as a smooth disc in earlier images, this faint galaxy has now been revealed to contain at least 15 massive, star-forming clumps.
That's far more than scientists thought possible for a galaxy at such an early time in the Universe's history.
Our impact on space science
We played a key role in this international research.
Emeritus Professor Ian Smail from the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy in our top-rated Physics Department co-authored this study.
He contributed his experience of studying the formation of young galaxies using a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
This technique uses massive galaxy clusters as natural magnifying glasses, making distant galaxies look up to 100 times brighter and larger.
Pioneered in part by our researchers, gravitational lensing has helped reveal details in galaxies that would otherwise be too fine and too faint to study.
Challenging established theories
The Cosmic Grapes galaxy was observed using data from two of the world's most advanced observatories: the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
The findings show that this galaxy not only rotates but contains far more structure than current theories predict.
It may represent a whole population of similar galaxies whose complexity is hidden by current telescope limits.
As a result, scientists may need to rethink how galaxies formed and evolved in the early Universe.
Image - Near-infrared images taken by JWST of the galaxy cluster "RXCJ0600-2007," which causes a powerful gravitational lensing effect. Unprecedented high-resolution observations unveiled the structure of a distant galaxy in the early universe — composed of more than 15 compact star-forming clumps arranged like a "bunch of grapes" (zoom-in panel). The image represents the intrinsic view of the galaxy after correcting for gravitational lensing distortion. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Fujimoto et al.)
