In another breathtaking breakthrough, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed a colossal celestial structure unlike anything seen before a chain of galaxies now named the "Cosmic Vine." This jaw-dropping formation stretches over 13 million light-years across, weaving through space with at least 20 tightly packed galaxies, each bound together in what scientists believe is an early blueprint of modern galaxy clusters the largest gravitationally held structures in the universe.

The Cosmic Vine resides in the Extended Groth Strip, a well-studied patch of sky nestled between the constellations Ursa Major and Boötes. JWST detected this structure at a redshift of 3.44, meaning we’re seeing it as it existed when the universe was only about 2.5 billion years old. The entire structure is estimated to carry a mind-blowing 260 billion solar masses, and spans a width of nearly 650,000 light-years comparable in scale to some of the largest known superstructures in the cosmos.

Among the 20 galaxies identified in the vine, two standouts Galaxy A and Galaxy E show unusually low star-formation activity, hinting they may have already undergone quenching processes. This suggests that even in the early universe, some galaxies had begun the transition from star-forming spirals to more dormant ellipticals. The Cosmic Vine offers astronomers a rare, time-stamped snapshot of large-scale cosmic evolution in progress, and underscores JWST’s powerful role in reshaping our understanding of the universe's deep history.

Credit: Findings based on JWST observations led by international teams from NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency; early data published via the Astrophysical Journal Letters, July 2025.