Space A 12 billion year old “Milky Way baby”

Astronomers have observed a “baby galaxy” that already looks like our Milky Way. Its light took more than 12 billion years to reach us. We can therefore see it as it was when the universe was 10% of its current age, specifies the European Southern Observatory. The galaxies were then in formation. But this early one already has a spinning disk and a brighter central bulb, like evolved spiral galaxies. It appears as a circle of light because it is distorted by the mass of another galaxy between it and us, which acts like a magnifying glass.

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