The headlines were misleading.

Recent galactic births surprise astronomers from New Scientist. Youthful Galaxies Surprise Astronomers from Space.Com.

Here's the straight poop. (The picture is from the BBC story.)

A few years ago NASA launched a new satellite telescope, the Galex. Its mission was to scan the far edge of the Big Bang, where the "young" galaxies are (because light from there has been traveling for billions and billions of years, as Carl Sagan used to say).

Well the pictures are coming in, and lo and behold, there are dozens of new galaxies being formed just a billion or so light years out, with lots of new Earth-sized stars in them.

This doesn't make them "young." But it does mean that these newly-found galaxies post-date the Big Bang. Not everything started then. Maybe there are smaller, "little bangs" going on all the time, in this great Universe. Maybe there are little contractions going on, too. Maybe the Universe, and cosmology, are more layered than we imagined.

Maybe man was wrong. Maybe we haven't fully comprehended God's creation yet.

In science, we call this exciting. This is wonderful Christmas news.

In religion that might be called a threat. Galileo was a threat. Darwin is a threat.

Personally I prefer exciting.

Carl did, too.