"It's bananas": CU researchers use James Webb telescope to find ancient galaxies that shouldn't exist

A group of researchers, including some from the University of Colorado, used the James Webb telescope to spot ancient galaxies that should not be there.

The team, which is made up of an group of international researchers, released a new report Wednesday saying that six new "candidate galaxies" have been detected, dating back to 500-700 million years after the Big Bang. According to those researchers, those galaxies should not have had time to form that quickly in the early universe. 

"It's bananas," Erica Nelson, co-author of the new research and assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a press release. "You just don't expect the early universe to be able to organize itself that quickly. These galaxies should not have had time to form."    

The telescope has found evidence of galaxies that formed even earlier, but were much smaller in size to the new finds. The new galaxies are massive in comparison, with almost as many stars as modern-day galaxies. Researchers previously did not think it was possible for galaxies to achieve that level of expansion in such a short amount of time, or for the level of matter needed to form that many stars to organize so quickly. 

"Another possibility is that these things are a different kind of weird object, such as faint quasars, which would be just as interesting," Nelson said.

More research is needed to confirm the size of the recently discovered galaxies. If confirmed, the findings could potentially rewrite astronomy books.