The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy
Astronomers found that there are more galaxies that are similar to Milky Way. And these galaxies could be the kind where life can develop, BBC reported. Researchers from the University of Manchester in the UK found an abundance of Milky Way-like galaxies in the early universe.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of researchers including those at The University of Manchester and the University of Victoria in Canada discovered that galaxies like our own Milky Way dominate throughout the universe and are surprisingly common, the University of Manchester said in a release.
However, experts in the UK and Canada think that galaxies that look like the Milky Way are 10 times more common than previously thought.
The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy, it is a huge collection of stars, dust and gas. It got its name from a Greek myth about the goddess Hera who sprayed milk across the sky. These galaxies are thought to be the most common in the nearby Universe and might be the types of galaxies where life can develop given the nature of their formation history.
Scientists earlier thought that these galaxies were too fragile to exist in the early Universe.
Christopher Conselice, Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy at The University of Manchester, said, “Using the Hubble Space Telescope we thought that disk galaxies were almost non-existent until the Universe was about six billion years old, these new JWST results push the time these Milky Way-like galaxies form to almost the beginning of the Universe.”
The research completely overturns the existing understanding of how scientists think our Universe evolves, and the scientists say new ideas need to be considered.