Astronomers discover huge disk galaxy formed more than 12 billion years ago

An artist's impression of the Wolfe Disk, a massive disk galaxy in the early universe. (Image credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello)

Astronomers recently discovered a colossal galaxy which was formed just 1.5 billion years after the Bing Bang, challenging the accepted theories of 'how all galaxies in the universe may have formed'.

According to a study published in the journal Nature, the 12.5 billion-year-old rotating galactic disk has been renamed galaxy DLA0817g as "Wolfe Disk," after late astronomer Arthur M. Wolfe.

As the name suggests, 'disk galaxies' are disk-shaped systems of stars, earlier observations showed these types of galaxies formed gradually, and did not reach a large mass until much later. 

One of the world's most powerful telescopes located in Chile, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), was used by scientists to make this discovery.

Researchers found out that the object was a large, stable rotating disk, clocking in at a whopping 70 billion times the mass of our sun. The disk appears as it was when the universe was just 1.5 billion years old, or 10% of its current age, they observed. 

Some suggest that the galaxy might have formed by a process known as "cold-mode accretion." 

However, some astrophysicists say more similar observations would be needed to validate this hypothesis as these findings are based off of a single galaxy.