We expect galaxies to grow from small to large, and according to theory, this is quite gradual,” explains researcher Ivo Lappi, an astronomer at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. It takes a while before you get 100 billion stars together. Collecting. ”

Children’s systems

The idea was that if they looked out into the early universe – the “nursery of the universe” – they would see very young galaxies. “What we found was something completely different!” says Laby enthusiastically. “We’ve seen very red, strange galaxies. It takes a lot of stars to generate that light. That means those galaxies are very massive. We see galaxies the same size as the Milky Way, which is already a very big galaxy.”

In addition, these children are not as big as the Milky Way, but they are 30 times more compact. “Very strange and exciting,” says Labey. “It undermines the models we normally use to explain the growth of stars and galaxies in the universe.” According to the astronomer, galaxies are so big that the question is whether there is enough gas in the universe to form them at all. Then you reach the grounds .the great explosion theory. “It’s been around for 50 years and it’s well tested: You can’t just change that.”

Chapter one

Researchers are already facing many new questions. What follows is a long process: “We will make detailed pictures of these galaxies: then you will see exactly what is happening, but that will take another year. We are looking forward to it! Then we will know exactly what this light is formed of, whether it is stars or something else.”

You may be wondering what would it matter to know what the nursery of the universe looked like millions of years ago, but Labbé has an answer. “After the Big Bang, there were no stars and galaxies; neither plants nor humans. The first galaxies and stars that eventually formed formed the particles of our bodies. This nursery is, in a sense, our own history. It is an origin story, almost sentimental in fact. The Story of Our History, Chapter One from the universe.”