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Early barred galaxy raises questions about cosmic evolution

Observations of a galaxy from an early period of the Universe’s history reveal a bar-shaped structure and gas dynamics thought not to have been possible at that time.
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  1. Deanne Fisher

    1. Deanne Fisher is at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia.

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Spectacular views of galaxies have long fascinated astronomers and the general public alike. Most galaxies in the nearby Universe have arranged themselves, through natural responses to internal dynamics, into well-organized shapes. These include spiral structures and bars — long, narrow arrangements of stars and gas that stretch across the middle of large galaxies (Fig. 1a). Bars are highly evolved, well-organized systems that take time to form, and so they are not expected to have occurred in the very early Universe. But in a paper in Nature , Huang et al. 1 report observations of a large-scale bar in a galaxy from when the Universe was only 2.6 billion years old, about 20% of the Universe’s current age.

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Nature 641, 854-855 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01444-x

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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