Our understanding of how galaxies form and the nature of dark matter could be completely upended, after new observations of a stellar population bigger than the Milky Way from more than 11 billion years ago that should not exist.

A paper published in Nature details findings using new data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The results find that a massive galaxy in the early universe – observed 11.5 billion years ago (a cosmic redshift of 3.2) – has an extremely old population of stars formed much earlier – 1.5 billion years earlier in time (a redshift of around 11). The observation upends current modeling, as not enough dark matter has built up in sufficient concentrations to seed their formation.

Swinburne University of Technology’s Distinguished Professor Karl Glazebrook led the study and the international team that used the JWST for spectroscopic observations of this massive quiescent galaxy.

A newly discovered quasar is a real record-breaker. Not only is it the brightest quasar ever seen, but it’s also the brightest astronomical object in general ever seen. It’s also powered by the hungriest and fastest-growing black hole ever seen — one that consumes the equivalent of over one sun’s mass a day.

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The quasar, as bright as 500 trillion suns, has evaded astronomers for over 40 years because of its incredible luminosity.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have discovered what may be the brightest object in the universe, a quasar with a black hole at its heart growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a sun a day.

The record-breaking quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than our sun. The black hole powering this distant quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our sun, an Australian-led team reported Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

While the quasar resembles a mere dot in images, scientists envision a ferocious place.

This is very cool. I didn’t know that something could hold so much more water than than our Earth. I can see something having more water but trillions of times?

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The water is in the form of vapor distributed around a black hole said to be 20 billion times more massive than the sun.

Scientists have proposed an intriguing theory on our universe’s rapid expansion.

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For years, scientists have grappled with the enigma of the universe expanding rapidly.

Observations like the redshift of galaxies and the cosmic microwave background hint at this cosmic phenomenon, but a complete explanation remains elusive.

A theoretical study has now provided an intriguing explanation: our universe’s expansion may be driven by the collisions and mergers with other universes, colloquially referred to as “baby” parallel universes.

Theoretical predictions have been confirmed with the discovery of an outflow of molecular gas from a quasar when the Universe was less than a billion years old.

A quasar is a compact region powered by a supermassive black hole located in the center of a massive galaxy.

They are extremely luminous, with a point-like appearance similar to stars, and are extremely distant from Earth.

Ever since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured its first glimpse of the early universe, astronomers have been surprised by the presence of what appear to be more “ultramassive” galaxies than expected. Based on the most widely accepted cosmological model, they should not have been able to evolve until much later in the history of the universe, spurring claims that the model needs to be changed.

This would upend decades of established science.

“The development of objects in the universe is hierarchical. You start small and get bigger and bigger,” said Julian Muñoz, an assistant professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin and co-author of a recent paper published in Physical Review Letters that tests changes to the cosmological model. The study concludes that revising the standard cosmological model is not necessary. However, astronomers may have to revisit what they understand about how the first galaxies formed and evolved.