Astronomers have discovered the most distant and thus earliest spiral galaxy ever seen, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This "twin" of the Milky Way existed just 1 billion years after the Big Bang, challenging our theories of galactic evolution.
Previously, it was believed that galaxies like ours would take billions of years to form distinct features like spiral arms, vast star-forming disks, and central bulges of densely packed stars. Yet, rather than being the expected chaotic galactic blob, those well-ordered features appear to be present in this galaxy, which is so distant that its light has taken 12.8 billion years to reach us.
