Using the telescope known as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team of researchers may have found the most distant spiral galaxy ever seen, according to a statement. The galaxy, dubbed BRI 1335–0417, is estimated to have formed only 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang, making it the most ancient known galaxy with a spiral morphology. The discovery of this galaxy in the very early universe sheds light on the formation and evolution of spiral galaxies in cosmic history. “I was excited because I had never seen such clear evidence of a rotating disk, spiral structure, and centralized mass structure in a distant galaxy in any previous literature,” said Takafumi Tsukui, a graduate student at the university SOKENDAI and the lead author of the research paper, in the statement. “The quality of the ALMA data was so good that I was able to see so much detail that …