James Webb Space Telescope finds 'real surprise' at beginning of the universe

Some of the world's leading astronomers have been left 'really surprised' after discovering something new about the early days of the universe.

Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which cost a staggering $10 billion (£8.05 billion), the international team came across the discovery using JWST's Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam).

The NIRCam allows us to look at images from deep space that we simply couldn't comprehend with our own eyes and will be essential to NASA's attempts to find alien life on other planets.

The research, which was published today (24 April), studied the formation of the universe's early galaxies with the JWST essentially allowing us to look back in time.

Previously, the Hubble Space Telescope let NASA and scientists look back in time to the formation of galaxies up to nine billion years ago.

But through the JWST and its increased sensitivity and wavelength range, we're talking even further back in time.

Led by astronomers from Durham University in the north east of England, they used Webb to look for something called bar formation when the universe was just a few billion years old. It might sound old but in the grand scheme is still the pretty early days, with the universe around 13.7 billion years old today.

In cosmos speak, bars are elongated strips of stars across the universe. It's similar to disc or spiral galaxies such as our very own Milky Way.

CGI of the James Webb Space Telescope (Getty Stock Images)

As these strips of stars mature, they then regulate star formation within a galaxy, pushing gas into its central area.

Their presence also tells astronomers that galaxies have entered a more settled, mature phase rather than the more violent nature of their early days.

But the findings from Webb mean that scientific theory about the early days of the universe might have to be re-thought after looking back at the formation of galaxies between eight and 11.5 billion years ago.

The latest research is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Lead author is Zoe Le Conte; a PhD researcher in the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy within the Department of Physics at Durham University.

The universe is a very large and old place (Getty Stock Images)

Le Conte said: “Galaxies in the early universe are maturing much faster than we thought.

“This is a real surprise because you would expect the universe at that stage to be very turbulent with lots of collisions between galaxies and a lot of gas that hasn’t yet transformed into stars.

“However, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope we are seeing a lot of these bars much earlier in the life of the Universe which means that galaxies were at a more settled stage in their evolution than previously thought.

“This means we will have to adjust our views on early galaxy evolution.”

Of 368 disc galaxies observed, the researchers saw that almost 20 percent had bars (strips of stars). This is twice as many than observed by Hubble.

Grey-scale image of a galaxy from 10.6 billion years ago showing thick bars, which are strips of stars (Zoe Le Conte)

Co-author Dr Dimitri Gadotti, from the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy within the Department of Physics at Durham University, said the discovery was 'very exciting'.

“The simulations of the Universe now need to be scrutinised to see if we get the same results as the observations we’ve made with James Webb," Dr Gadotti said.

“We have to think outside of what we thought we knew.”

All eyes are now on looking even further back in time - some 12.2 billion years - to see if the findings here support or counter the new concept.