Data from the James Webb Space Telescope indicate that a galaxy known as GN-z11 has a supermassive black hole at its center — one that's far more massive than astronomers expected.
At about 600 million years after the Big Bang, they're not the oldest galaxies the telescope has spotted. But they appear as developed as our Milky Way — far further along than researchers expected.
Galaxies that existed soon after the Big Bang turn out to be surprisingly bright, a discovery that's both thrilled and puzzled scientists who study how the universe evolved over time.
The upcoming launch of NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope should let astronomers see what some of the universe's first stars and galaxies looked like soon after the Big Bang.
