Early Universe Might Not Have Been So Chaotic

Large disk galaxies, much like our own Milky Way, may have existed in the early days of the universe.

"Theoretically we thought that when the universe was only 5 percent of its present age, it would be a place full of chaos and disorder," Rupert Croft says. "Our simulation showed that the early universe might be far from being just this. It might contain beautiful symmetrical galaxies, like the Milky Way." Hubble Heritage/CC BY-SA 2.0

Large disk galaxies, much like our own Milky Way, may have existed in the early days of the universe.

A new large-scale simulation suggests that the early universe—500 million years after the Big Bang—might have had more order and structure than previously thought.

The findings, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, will help guide researchers using next-generation telescopes like the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as they search the sky for evidence of the first galaxies.

Very Young Universe

“It’s awe-inspiring to think that galaxies much like our own existed when the universe was so young,” said Tiziana Di Matteo, professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University. “The deepest Hubble Space Telescope observations have thus only covered small volumes of space and have found very irregular, clumpy galaxies at these early epochs.

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