The galaxy in question was named after the astrophysicist Arthur Wolfe who was one of the first to suggest that disk galaxies existed in the universe’s infancy.
The discovery of a huge disk-shaped galaxy, which may be the oldest to be discovered so far, may challenge mankind’s existing understanding of how galaxies are born and how they attain their eventual shape and size, ScienceDaily reports.
While disk-shaped galaxies like the Milky Way Galaxy apparently reached their current considerable size billions of years after the Big Bang (which is believed to have taken place some 13.8 billion years ago), the new study suggests that the galaxy in question, DLA0817g (also known as the Wolfe Disk), formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, the media outlet notes.
This discovery is reportedly poised to challenge many existing galaxy formation simulations which postulate that such massive galaxies “at this point in the evolution of the cosmos grew through many mergers of smaller galaxies and hot clumps of gas”.
Spotted via the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the galaxy was named after astrophysicist Arthur Wolfe who passed away in 2014 and who “was one of the first to suggest that disk galaxies existed in the universe’s infancy”, Science News points out.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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