Quiescent galaxies earlier than expected

[Halbhh]

It's such an interesting time in astronomy/cosmology. While this has already been discussed a few times in the last year or so, here's a recent new observation.

"massive quiescent galaxies have now been observed as early as one to two billion years after the Big Bang"

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"Galaxy formation is in large part dictated by how dark matter concentrates," she says. "Having these extremely massive galaxies so early in the universe is posing significant challenges to our standard model of cosmology. This is because we don't think such massive dark matter structures as to host these massive galaxies have had time yet to form. More observations are needed to understand how common these galaxies may be and to help us understand how truly massive these galaxies are."

Glazebrook hopes this could be a new opening for our understanding of the physics of dark matter, stating, "JWST has been finding increasing evidence for massive galaxies forming early in time. This result sets a new record for this phenomenon. Although it is very striking, it is only one object. But we hope to find more, and if we do, this will really upset our ideas of galaxy formation."

'Beyond what's possible': New JWST observations unearth mysterious ancient galaxy

Our understanding of how galaxies form and the nature of dark matter could be completely upended after new observations of a stellar population bigger than the Milky Way from more than 11 billion years ago that should not exist.

phys.org