NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has broken all records by discovering the galaxy MoM z14. It is the oldest galaxy ever observed, existing just 280 million years after the Big Bang.
MoM z14 is located more than 13.5 billion light-years away and was discovered during the Mirage or Miracle (MoM) spectroscopic observation.
Despite its antiquity, MoM z14 has a surprisingly advanced structure: it contains heavy elements such as carbon and nitrogen. This indicates that several generations of stars have already formed and died by then. This calls into question current ideas about the rapid formation of the first galaxies.
The discovery is a turning point in our understanding of the early universe and raises new questions, such as how such massive and complex structures formed so quickly after the Big Bang.
