Webb uncovers the Big Wheel—a massive spiral galaxy just 2 billion years after the Big Bang
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals a giant, rotating spiral disk galaxy nicknamed the Big Wheel at redshift 3.245, about two billion years after the Big Bang. With a stellar mass around 3.7×10^11 solar masses and a disk extending ~30 kiloparsecs, it rivals the largest nearby spirals and remains unusually ordered for its epoch, challenging standard galaxy-formation models. The kinematic data confirm rotation, and the dense environment may have aided rapid growth, suggesting multiple pathways for early disk formation and that the early universe hosted more complex structures than once thought.