NASA’S James Webb Space Telescope has found the oldest galaxy ever seen in the universe.
According to scientists, the galaxy is called GLASS-z13 and it dates back to 300 million years after the Big Bang, which would make it over 13 billion years old.
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In comparison, the Earth is thought to be around 4.5 billion years old.
Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope is on an unprecedented mission to let us explore the universe more than ever before.
It’s aiming to find even older galaxies than GLASS-z13 and essentially look back in time to help us learn more about how the universe formed.
The previous record-holding ancient galaxy is called GN-Z11 but the newly observed galaxy beats this by around 100 million years.
The ancient GLASS-z13 galaxy is said to have a mass bigger than one billion suns.
Despite this large mass, it’s actually smaller in size than the Milky Way we call home.
The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years wide, whereas the GLASS-z13 galaxy is only a few thousand light-years wide.
The scientists who spotted the ancient galaxy also spotted another one of a similar age to the previous record holder.
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Rohan Naidu, one of the researchers, told New Scientist: “We found two very compelling candidates for extremely distant galaxies.
“If these galaxies are at the distance we think they are, the universe is only a few hundred million years old at that point.”
The news of the ancient galaxies comes after scientists recently revealed the first deep space image from James Webb Space Telescope.
