WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) – Scientists have captured an extraordinary cosmic encounter between two ancient galaxies on a collision course, each boasting a star population comparable to the Milky Way. This stellar clash, which occurred when the universe was just 20% of its current age, evoked imagery of two knights meeting head-on in a medieval joust. The galaxies were observed as they appeared approximately 11.4 billion years ago—around 2.4 billion years after the Big Bang—using two