International Research Excellence Citation Awards
The most distant rotating galaxy hails from 13.3 billion years ago The galaxy started spinning just 500 million years after the Big Bang A galaxy about 13.3 billion light-years away (inset in this image of a galaxy cluster from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is the most distant galaxy to show signs of rotation. ALMA/ESO, NAOJ AND NRAO; NASA, ESA HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE; W. ZHENG/JHU, M. POSTMAN/STSCI; THE CLASH TEAM; T. HASIMOTO ET AL / NATURE 2018 By Lisa Grossman JULY 13, 2022 AT 11:00 AM There is a galaxy spinning like a record in the early universe — far earlier than any others have been seen twirling around. Astronomers have spotted signs of rotation in the galaxy MACS1149-JD1, JD1 for short, which sits so far away that its light takes 13.3 billion years to reach Earth. “The galaxy we analyzed, JD1, is the most distant example of a rotational galaxy,” says astro...