Discovered: What Isn’t There

Astronomers discovered a spiral galaxy (the Milky Way is one) using Hubble telescope data. Light from it finally reached Earth, “meaning astronomers are now seeing it as it looked just 3 billion years after the Big Bang that created the universe.” The problem is that a galaxy the age of Galaxy BX442 ought not to appear so well-designed.

“The fact that this galaxy exists is astounding,” study lead author David Law, of the University of Toronto, said in a statement. “Current wisdom holds that such ‘grand-design’ spiral galaxies simply didn’t exist at such an early time in the history of the universe.”

Read the rest of the Space.com report in yesterday’s CSM. It includes useful links for down-on-earth readers and thinkers.

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Wiki-image by hubblesite of spiral galaxy used by CC BY-SA 3.0.