They were, at first glance, inexplicably huge. In February, astronomers discovered that six of the very distant galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are much brighter than anyone had expected, and thus appear to be much larger and more mature. announced that it looked like One galaxy, taken just 700 million years after the Big Bang, contains more than 100 billion stars, roughly the number our galaxy, the Milky Way, has amassed over his 13 billion years. Is the same.
Cosmologists are once again faced with observations that are impossible to explain according to the best models of how the universe evolved. There wasn’t enough time to collect this amount of material to form so many stars. at the time, Mike Bolan-Colchin Professors at the University of Texas at Austin argued that the scenario poses “serious challenges” to our understanding of the universe.
But as astronomers delved into the data, it became clear that current cosmological models are resilient, as has been proven time and time again. or is it? That’s because while some analyzes show that these six galaxies aren’t as big as first thought, others suggest they may be even bigger. This indicates that cosmology may need to be reworked, depending on follow-up observations. Perhaps by throwing new cosmic elements into the mix to explain the obvious paradoxes.
“This basically means that you can see the galaxy before it assembles,” he says. Charles Steinhardt…