When astronomers peer deep into space, they’re actually looking back in time. And what they just found has them completely rethinking how quickly the universe grew up.
Meet JADES-GS-z14-0, the most distant confirmed galaxy ever discovered, whose light has been traveling toward us for a mind-boggling 13.4 billion years. That means we’re seeing it as it existed when the universe was practically in diapers — less than 300 million years old, or about 2% of its current age.
But here’s the twist that has scientists’ jaws on the floor: this galaxy isn’t behaving like the cosmic infant it should be. Instead, it’s showing signs of chemical maturity that shouldn’t be possible so early in the universe’s timeline.
“It is like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies,” explains Sander Schouws, a PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands and first author of the groundbreaking study accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
This Galaxy Is Growing Up Way Too Fast
Typically, baby galaxies are filled with young stars made mostly of lighter elements like hydrogen and helium. It takes time for stars to create heavier elements like oxygen, which only get distributed throughout galaxies after stars die.
Scientists had assumed that at just 300 million years after the Big Bang, the universe was simply too young for galaxies to be rich in these heavier elements. But ALMA, a powerful telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert, detected something unexpected: this ancient galaxy has approximately 10 times more heavy elements than astronomers predicted.
“I was astonished by the unexpected results because they opened a new view on the first phases of galaxy evolution,” says Stefano Carniani from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy, who led the paper accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Breaking The Cosmic Rules
This discovery is basically forcing astronomers to reconsider their entire timeline for how and when galaxies formed. The presence of so much oxygen in such a young galaxy suggests that the universe’s earliest galaxies developed much faster than our current models predict.
“The evidence that a galaxy is already mature in the infant Universe raises questions about when and how galaxies formed,” Carniani adds.
Ridiculously Precise Measurements
The oxygen detection didn’t just confirm the galaxy’s surprising chemical maturity—it also allowed astronomers to measure its distance with incredible precision.
“The ALMA detection offers an extraordinarily precise measurement of the galaxy’s distance down to an uncertainty of just 0.005 percent. This level of precision — analogous to being accurate within 5 cm over a distance of 1 km — helps refine our understanding of distant galaxy properties,” explains Eleonora Parlanti, a PhD student at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and author on the Astronomy & Astrophysics study.
While the James Webb Space Telescope initially spotted this record-breaking galaxy, it took ALMA’s specialized capabilities to confirm just how far away it actually is.
“This shows the amazing synergy between ALMA and JWST to reveal the formation and evolution of the first galaxies,” notes Associate Professor Rychard Bouwens from Leiden Observatory.
Even scientists not involved in the research are stunned by the findings. Gergö Popping, an ESO astronomer at the European ALMA Regional Centre, admits: “I was really surprised by this clear detection of oxygen in JADES-GS-z14-0. It suggests galaxies can form more rapidly after the Big Bang than had previously been thought.”
The discovery showcases how our understanding of the early universe continues to evolve, with each new observation potentially rewriting what we thought we knew about the cosmic timeline.