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00:04 When astronomers first turned on the James Webb Space
00:06 Telescope and pointed it out into the black of space,
00:09 one of the first images they got was this one.
00:12 It shows galaxies that are billions of years old,
00:14 those that were more or less formed at the dawn
00:17 of the universe itself.
00:18 Now experts say this one, which they estimate
00:21 is around 13 billion years old, is a bit of an enigma,
00:24 as it shouldn't exist at all.
00:26 It's called ZF-UDS-7329, and astronomers
00:31 say the galaxy is too complex to have been created
00:33 in the early days after the Big Bang.
00:36 The issue is it's around the size of the Milky Way,
00:38 but it also has around four times the number of stars
00:41 by mass.
00:42 The issue arises because our current dark matter model
00:44 suggests that it was not in a state
00:46 to support galaxies of this size at that time,
00:48 as it was too smooth.
00:49 Those same models outline that as time went on,
00:51 dark matter ripples grew because of gravity.
00:53 Collecting in larger clusters and dragging other elements,
00:56 namely hydrogen, together with it,
00:58 thus allowing it to create larger, more complex galaxies.
01:01 Another peculiarity about the galaxy
01:03 is that it doesn't seem to have changed much
01:05 after its creation.
01:07 The study's authors say this challenge
01:08 is the standard model of cosmology, adding, quote,
01:11 "The key question now is how they formed so fast
01:14 very early in the universe, and what mysterious mechanisms
01:17 lead to stopping them from forming stars abruptly
01:19 when the rest of the universe is doing so."
01:23 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:26 (upbeat music)
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