NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope may have detected a cluster of massive galaxies they shouldn’t exist.

The telescope recorded six celestial bodies, which, according to scientists, are massive galaxies that formed 500-700 million years after the Big Bang, when the age of the universe was only 3% of its current age. Several of these galaxies have ten billion times the mass of the sun, and one of them is equivalent to 100 billion suns.

“Against” 99% of existing theories

The discovery threatens to overturn existing theories about the birth of galaxies in the early universe, with the researchers noting that what they see shakes up 99% of existing models of the universe. As they say, they did not expect such large galaxies to be found so quickly after the Big Bang.

“These objects are much more massive than you might expect,” explained Joel Lezza, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, who created models for the survey by analyzing light from the galaxies in question.

“We expected to see only tiny young galaxies at this point in time, but we found galaxies as mature as our own in a region previously thought to be dawn of the universe“, he added. “We looked into the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find,” Lezza said. “Finally, we discovered something so unexpected that it actually creates problems for science. This calls into question our entire understanding of the formation of early galaxies.“.

Scientists warn that due to the remoteness and age of these celestial bodies, they cannot be absolutely sure of their nature. The researchers say some of them may turn out to be supermassive black holes, but given six different results, some of them are probably actually galaxies, as predicted.

“If even one of these galaxies is real, it would push the boundaries of our understanding of cosmology,” said Erica Nelson, co-author of the new study and assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The new study, titled “Population of red massive candidate galaxies about 600 million years after the Big Bang,” is published today in the journal Nature.

Sources: Nature, independent