Spiral galaxies evolved 4 billion years sooner than expected

Sub: Science and tech

Sec: Space

Context:

A new study has revealed more spiral galaxies in the universe’s youth than astronomers had expected.

More on news:

The universe is about 13.8 billion years old and is home to different kinds of galaxies, from spiral to elliptical and those with or without bulges.
While the universe’s younger galaxies have tended to spiral, the older ones have a variety of shapes.
Studying the older galaxies is more difficult because the light from them is fainter.

Seeing further into the past:

The first step is to use light of the infrared and optical wavelengths to detect galaxies in the early universe.
Since older galaxies are harder to detect, powerful telescopes were required.
Ideally, astronomers would like to observe light emitted when the universe was around 500 million years old, when the galaxies were thought to be forming.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, has helped astronomers gaze much deeper into the universe’s past than before.
Some of them dated to 1.5 billion years after the universe’s birth.