[ExI] Massive galaxies grew in the early universe

[Stuart LaForge]

On Tuesday, November 10, 2020, 01:40:22 PM PST, BillK via extropy-chat  
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:


> This research might help Spike's worries about gravitational waves
from the early universe.
>
> <https://knowridge.com/2020/10/massive-galaxies-were-surprisingly-mature-in-the-early-universe-says-study/>
>
> Quote:
>
> Most galaxies formed when the universe was still very young.
> Our own galaxy, for example, likely started forming 13.6 billion years
> ago, in our 13.8 billion-year-old universe.

I do think that galaxies have a surprising amount of structure for  
their age. To put this into perspective, consider that the sun and our  
solar system orbits the galactic nucleus once every 230 million years.  
That means that there has only been enough time for our sun to have  
orbited the galaxy about 60 times since the big bang. To have gone  
from a nearly homogenous cloud of dust and gas to the beautiful spiral  
disk shape in less than 60 revolutions seems unbelievably fast.  
Especially since most computer simulations I have seen online seem to  
have the galaxy spinning like a top and many more than 60 times.

For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-25dEcY-WU


Stuart LaForge