A massive, rotating disc galaxy that first formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang could upend our understanding of galaxy formation, scientists suggest in a new study.
The disc galaxy is 70 times the mass of our Sun
©NRAO
In traditional galaxy formation models and according to modern cosmology, galaxies are built beginning with dark-matter halos. Over time those halos pull in gases and material, eventually building up full-fledged galaxies. Disc galaxies, like our own Milky Way, form with prominent discs of stars and gas and are thought to be created in a method known as ‘hot-mode’ galaxy formation, where gas falls inward towards the galaxy’s central region where it then cools and condenses.