00:00When astronomers look deep into the blackness of space, they are literally looking back
00:07in time, as light traveling to us from the earliest parts of the universe takes billions
00:12of years to reach us.
00:13And this is what experts say is the earliest galaxy ever observed, one that was formed
00:18just 300 million years after the Big Bang.
00:22It's called JADES-GS-Z14-0, and experts say it stretches some 1600 light years across.
00:29However, all of the starlight coming from this newly minted record holder is challenging
00:33what physicists believed possible.
00:36According to the researchers, this much starlight implies that the galaxy is several hundreds
00:40of millions of times the mass of the sun.
00:42This raises the question, how can nature make such a bright, massive, and large galaxy in
00:47less than 300 million years?
00:49This galaxy would have formed during what is called the Cosmic Dawn, or the first billion
00:53years after the Big Bang.
00:55Astronomers predicted that when the galaxy was formed, there wouldn't be heavy elements
00:58and oxygen in these quantities.
01:00Yet this galaxy has them in troves.
01:02Experts say that means there were likely several generations of stars that experienced entire
01:07life cycles prior to the astronomers observing it.
01:10With one of the researchers noting, it is stunning that the universe can make such a
01:13galaxy in only 300 million years.
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