Astronomers may have discovered one of the missing links in the evolution of galaxies.

Eighteen of the recently discovered dusty, star-forming galaxies (in red) formed almost 13 billion years ago. Credit: UMass Amherst

doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae382a
Credibility: 989
#Galaxies

An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, announced a discovery that could fill an important gap in understanding how galaxies evolved throughout the history of the universe

They identified a population of very old galaxies, full of dust and still active in star formation, that existed when the universe was only about 1 billion years old-that is, approximately 12.7 billion years ago.

These galaxies represent a crucial transition point.

They connect two already known phases of galactic life: on the one hand, the extremely distant and bright galaxies, recently detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (James Webb), which emerged even earlier, about 500 million years after the Big Bang; on the other hand, the “quiescent” galaxies, which had already stopped intensely forming stars about 2 billion years after the beginning of the universe.

Until now, what was missing was precisely this intermediate “missing link”: massive galaxies, rich in metals and dust, but still in full star formation activity during this intermediate era.

What makes this discovery special is that these galaxies are difficult to observe with ordinary telescopes, since the enormous amount of cosmic dust absorbs the visible and ultraviolet light they emit.

To detect them, the researchers used the power of ALMA, the large array of antennas in the Atacama Desert, Chile, which captures the infrared radiation released when dust is heated by young stars.

They observed about 400 bright, dusty galaxies with ALMA and then refined the search with near-infrared images from James Webb, arriving at about 70 fainter candidates, most of which had never been seen before.

By combining and “stacking” the ALMA data, the team confirmed that these galaxies really belong to this remote era.

This revelation suggests that intense star formation-and the rapid growth of massive galaxies-occurred earlier than many theoretical models predicted.

If confirmed in future studies, the discovery indicates that our current ideas about cosmic history need to be adjusted, as it demonstrates that complex structures rich in heavy elements already existed when the universe was still very young.

In short, these dusty, active galaxies act as an essential bridge, helping to explain how galaxies transitioned from bright, chaotic objects in the primordial cosmos to the calmer, more evolved structures we see today.

Published in 02/18/2026 22h22

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Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.

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