By Kanyshai Butun
ISTANBUL (AA) - Indian scientists have discovered a new giant spiral galaxy 12 billion years away that looks much like the Milky Way, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.
According to the outlet, researchers discovered a massive galaxy that existed when the universe was some 1.5 billion years old.
Researchers named the new discovered galaxy Alaknanda, after the Himalayan river.
“The galaxy looks remarkably similar to our own Milky Way despite being present when the universe was only 10% of its current age,” said Rashi Jain, a student at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
The discovery challenges the current understanding of how galaxies were formed in the early universe.
Unlike others, Alakanda has a textbook spiral structure with two well-defined spiral arms wrapping around a bright central bulge, spanning approximately 30,000 light-years in diameter.
Scientists used to believe that the earliest formed galaxies did not have well-defined structures but instead were chaotic and clumpy, and extremely hot and turbulent.
“Finding such a well-formed spiral galaxy at this early epoch is quite unexpected. It tells us that sophisticated structures were being built in our universe much earlier than we thought possible,” Jain underlined.