Cosmic prematurity: James Webb Telescope finds entire galaxy shortly after the Big Bang

Data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are once again forcing astronomy to revise the timelines of cosmic evolution. A team led by student Daniel Ivanov at the US University of Pittsburg has identified a galaxy that shows surprising maturity.

The galaxy, called COSMOS-74706, existed around two billion years after the Big Bang. This corresponds to an age of around 11.5 billion years. The remarkable thing about it is not just the age, but the structure. It is a barred spiral galaxy.

These structural features, particularly the stellar bar in the center, are considered signs of advanced galactic evolution. As Universe Today reports, according to the classic Hubble sequence, galaxies usually begin as dusty star clusters before taking on complex shapes. The fact that such a phenomenon occurs so early in the history of the universe challenges existing theories.

Daniel Ivanov presented the results on January 8, 2026 at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. The discovery is based on spectroscopic data, which offers significantly greater accuracy than pure imaging.

“This galaxy developed bars two billion years after the birth of the universe,” explains Ivanov in a university press release. He emphasizes the uniqueness of the find as the most distant, spectroscopically confirmed barred spiral galaxy that was not distorted by gravitational lensing.

Function of the stellar bar

Barred spiral galaxies, which include our Milky Way, are characterized by a line-shaped collection of stars that crosses the center. These bars play a central role in the life cycle of a galaxy.

They act as a kind of funnel that directs gas from the outer areas into the center. This process feeds the supermassive black hole in the core and can simultaneously dampen star formation in the surrounding disk.

Previous observations of such early bars were often less clear. Many candidates were discovered through gravitational lensing, in which the gravity of massive foreground objects enhances but also distorts the light of the galaxy behind them.

Other studies relied on the so-called redshift through photometric measurements. This method is prone to inaccuracies of up to 15 percent, making accurate dating difficult.

The current analysis of COSMOS-74706, however, uses direct spectroscopy from the JWST instruments. This allows precise determination of distance and chemical composition without the distortions of a gravitational lens.

Confirmation for simulations

However, the presence of the bar at this early point in time is not entirely unexpected for theorists. Simulations had already suggested that such structures could theoretically have formed 12.5 billion years ago.

However, there has been a lack of reliable observational data to support these models. “In principle, this is not an era in which one expects to find many of these objects,” says Ivanov, describing the discovery.

The find is now helping researchers to narrow down the periods in which stable galactic structures form. It turns out that the universe apparently “grew up” faster than long assumed.

The work was made possible, among other things, by data from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The institute operates the James Webb Telescope on behalf of the US space agency NASA.

It should be noted critically that this is a single observation. In order to comprehensively correct the models of galaxy formation, astronomers will have to find more objects of this type at similar distances.