Astronomers baffled after James Webb Telescope finds massive galaxies similar to Milky Way

Cruising through the celestial realm, the James Webb Space Telescope landed upon a shocking discovery that has now left astronomers perplexed. According to Space.com, the telescope found galaxies almost as giant as the Milky Way during its early observation campaign.

Deep field images captured show mature red stars, that only appear as minuscule red dots. However, upon conducting a thorough analysis of the light emitted by the galaxies, space experts found that the galaxies formed merely 500,000 to 700,000 years after the Big Bang.

While such galaxies are not that surprising by themselves, what makes the recently spotted galaxies different than others is their size and the age of the stars they contain. The latest findings contradict existing ideas and observations about the universe's evolution. "We had specific expectations for the type of galaxies that live in the early universe: they are young and small," said Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State.

Astronomy professor sheds light on recent discovery 

"Previous studies of the early universe with Hubble and other instruments tend to find small, blue, baby galaxies at early times: objects which have just recently formed out of the primordial cosmic soup and are themselves building their early stars and structures," said Leja, who is one of the authors of the study.

Astronomers did not expect to see the red-colored stars, an indicator of how old the star is. Usually, stars at a younger age have a bright blue hue. However, they tend to emit a red glow towards their later stages. "The most massive galaxies in our sample are estimated to have masses [two to four times lower] than that of our own Milky Way. This was astounding — we're finding galaxy candidates as massive as our own galaxy when the universe was 3% of its current age," Leja said.