Astronomers have found a galaxy that "mirrors" our Milky Way

One of the most distant spiral galaxies ever observed has puzzled researchers because its structure resembles that of our Milky Way.

The galaxy REBELS-25 was discovered using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), according to a study accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (via Futurism).

Thanks to ALMA's extremely high resolution, astronomers were able to observe REBELS-25 in remarkable detail, noting its large spiral arms and elongated central band, similar to our Milky Way.

Interestingly, the galaxy appears incredibly "neat"—noting that astronomers observed it as it was when the universe was just 700 million years old (only 5% of its current age of 13.8 billion years). For comparison, the age of the Milky Way is 13.6 billion years.

In other words, researchers thought that it would take 13.6 billion years for a galaxy to appear as "organized" as ours—whereas REBELS-25 demonstrates that just 700 million years is sufficient.

"A galaxy like the Milky Way challenges our understanding of how quickly galaxies in the early universe evolve into the organized galaxies we see in the modern cosmos," explained lead author of the study, Lucy Rowland, a PhD candidate at Leiden University.

The team hopes to continue studying REBELS-25 using the James Webb Space Telescope.