"New found" galaxy is puzzling

Astronomers have come across a galaxy in an unexpected circumstance.

The finding has been lead by a Ph.D. student, Sijia Cai, with others. Their paper as a Draft is published at arxiv.org: 2507.17820, and is submitted to "Astrophysical Journal Letters" for late Nov. 2025.

The curiosity of this galaxy. dubbed MPG-CR3 or CR3 for short,  of which there are a few, is that it is found mostly isolated or in a pocket quite by itself. It should be a young galaxy estimated to be  2 million years old after cosmic inception.

The surprise is that it probably should not be there. According to collected history of the early development of the universe, the galaxy in its developmental stage belongs to earlier starters that are already demised.

It depicts a body, which is somehow surviving, while predecessors do not, that are believed to be the earliest possible manifestation of first galaxies to appear after the reionization of the cosmos which allowed bodies to be distinct. Those earlier bodies are also holding the earliest stellar elements, hydrogen and helium known to the cosmos and whereupon the rest of elements would evolve. "Remarkably,, this is the only known isolated galaxy at z~3 with a gas-phase metallicity as low as that of the most metal-poor clumps or galaxies at z>6, highlighting that such low metallicity environments can exist well after the reionization era."

CR3 is apparently in an underdense pocket, quite isolated from other galaxies, which is itself amazing, and makes it free from contamination of elements from surrounding galaxies according to studies of spectroscopics "mildly underdense environment may help suppress external enrichment, allowing pockets of chemically pristine  gas to persist". It is remarkably dust-free. It is metal-free, and is an earmark for the hard-to-find Population III generation stars which are believed to the first in the cosmos and mostly have demised, except for the 2 million year old presence of CR3. Yet. despite its age and development, it has small stars compared to other early galaxies which show huge stars.

The CR3 galaxy has been recorded earlier in stellar records at around 2019. However, it has not be researched or studied until just recently. So it is not such a "new" find.in current stellar studies per se at the time of this paper.

And there is plenty of room for more such finds in the cosmos.