The James Webb Space Telescope since becoming operational in 2022 has uncovered numerous surprises about what things were like in the universe's early stages. We now can add one more - observations of a galaxy that was already "dead" when the universe was only 5% of its current age.
Scientists said on Wednesday that Webb has spotted a galaxy where star formation had already ceased by roughly 13.1 billion years ago, 700 million years after the Big Bang event that gave rise to the universe. Many dead galaxies have been detected over the years, but this is the earliest by about 500 million years.
In some ways, this galaxy is like the late Hollywood actor James Dean, famous for his "live fast, die young" life story.
