When the Universe was still in its infancy, galaxies were expected to be clumpy, chaotic, rapidly evolving systems still trying to settle down.
But new observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal that some of the earliest galaxies had already become remarkably organised.
Astronomers from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, recently discovered that the earliest ‘spheroidal’ galaxies already obeyed one of astronomy’s fundamental law of galaxy architecture — the ‘Kormendy relation’, which links a spheroidal (rounded) galaxy’s size to its surface brightness.
New study points to ideal numberSimply put, this discovery provides a powerful new benchmark for theories explaining formation of galaxies.
According to IUCAA researchers, future simulations must explain not only how the earliest massive galaxies formed so rapidly, but also why they already obeyed the same underlying structural laws that continue to govern galaxies nearly 13 billion years later.
When the Universe was still in its infancy, galaxies were expected to be clumpy, chaotic, rapidly evolving systems still trying to settle down. But new observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal that some of the earliest galaxies had already become remarkably organised.
Astronomers from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, recently discovered that the earliest ‘spheroidal’ galaxies already obeyed one of astronomy’s fundamental law of galaxy architecture — the ‘Kormendy relation’, which links a spheroidal (rounded) galaxy’s size to its surface brightness.
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Simply put, this discovery provides a powerful new benchmark for theories explaining formation of galaxies. According to IUCAA researchers, future simulations must explain not only how the earliest massive galaxies formed so rapidly, but also why they already obeyed the same underlying structural laws that continue to govern galaxies nearly 13 billion years later.
