JWST: Pune Researchers Discover 'Alaknanda', Earliest Spiral Galaxy

• Pune researchers from NCRA-TIFR discovered Alaknanda, the most distant and earliest spiral galaxy, using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data.
• Alaknanda is 12 billion light-years away, observed when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old, and has a perfect spiral structure.
• The existence of such a developed spiral galaxy so early challenges current theories of galaxy formation and evolution.
• The discovery was led by researcher Rashi Jain and published in the internationally renowned journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Why It Matters: Alaknanda galaxy discovery defies theories of early universe formation.