Webb confirms the earliest known galaxy is erupting in stars

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted the earliest galaxy ever seen, and its unusually bright light is coming from a bizarre frenzy of star formation. Named JADES-GS-z14-0, the galaxy formed at least 290 million years after the Big Bang and contains stars that have been bursting into life since an estimated 200 million years after our universe began.

- BEN TURNER

Spotted by Webb's Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument, the mysterious origin and rapid development of the stars has opened up some fundamental questions about how our universe came to be. "The discovery by Webb of an abundance of luminous galaxies in the very early universe suggests that galaxies developed rapidly, in apparent tension with many standard models," researchers wrote in a study published in the journal Nature. "Galaxy formation models will need to address the existence of such large and luminous galaxies so early in cosmic history."