The above montage shows six recent images of ‘potentially’ massive galaxies photographed by the James Webb space telescope, going back to epochs around 600 million years after the universe began.

If the six red dots are confirmed to indeed be large galactic structures, these examples contradict almost all known models of galaxy formation from the early history of the universe and would suggest stellar masses over 100 times greater than previously predicted in this early period. Existing models of galaxy formation predict large galaxies would require several billion years to form, so if true these findings will require extensive revisions to our understanding of the large structure evolution of the universe.

Truth told we still know very little about the formation of galaxies. Their evolution is still shrouded in deep mystery, for example what forms the large bars we see in the centre of most mature spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way?

And of course their rotational dynamics have lead to the conclusion that clouds of invisible matter must surround them in giant halos (dark matter).