Mysteries of space keep confronting us

Andrew Griffin, science reporter at the UK's Independent, highlights some of the gaps in our understanding of the world around us when he digs into findings arising from the wonderful achievements of the James Webb space telescope. Humans, it seems, are still at the kindergarten level on the learning curve when it comes to cosmology.

The findings from the Webb telescope are these, Griffin writes:

The James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding galaxies that shouldn’t exist, a scientist has warned.

Six of the earliest and most massive galaxies that Nasa’s breakthrough telescope has seen so far appear to be bigger and more mature than they should be given where they are in the universe, researchers have warned.

The new findings build on previous research where scientists reported that despite coming from the very beginnings of the universe, the galaxies were as mature as our own Milky Way.

It's noteworthy that Griffin has used the term "warned" in describing the reaction of the scientific community to the findings. 

This seems to be because, as Griffin declares:

[A paper just published] suggests that, if scientists have not made a mistake, we may be missing some fundamental information about the universe. 

It suggests that the information from the JWST proposes a profound dilemma for scientists. The data indicates that there might be something wrong with the dark energy and cold dark matter paradigm, or ΛCDM, that has been guiding cosmology for decades.

Mike Boylan-Kolchin, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, the author of the new paper examining the unusual galaxies, says:

 “If the masses are right, then we are in uncharted territory. We’ll require something very new about galaxy formation or a modification to cosmology. One of the most extreme possibilities is that the universe was expanding faster shortly after the Big Bang than we predict, which might require new forces and particles.”

Professor Boylan-Kolchin’s paper, ‘Stress testing ΛCDM with high-redshift galaxy candidates’, is published in Nature Astronomy. The earlier research that he reworked was described by Griffin in this way:

Scientists found six galaxies, which together threaten to change what scientists know about the beginnings of galaxies in our universe. Researchers say they refer to the objects as “universe breakers” and that they are in tension with 99 per cent of existing models of the universe.

A scientist involved in Webb Telescope research, Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, states:

“We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.”

If they can be confirmed, they suggest that our history of the early cosmos may be wrong, and that galaxies grew far more quickly than we realised. That would require changing either our models of the universe or our understanding of how galaxies began.

“We looked into the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find,” Leja said. “It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question.”

Erica Nelson, co-author of the new research and assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado Boulder, tells how nothing is settled in the theories astrophysicists often pontificate on:

“If even one of these galaxies is real, it will push against the limits of our understanding of cosmology,” said 

And even other objects would still be shocking, researchers say. “Another possibility is that these things are a different kind of weird object, such as faint quasars, which would be just as interesting,” said Professor Nelson.

The search for the reality around us goes on, and in the meantime we can enjoy our amazement at the splendour of it all, and thank God.  

Ω See also:

'James Webb Space Telescope images challenge theories of how universe evolved' at phys.org  

Wonder at the latest hi-res images from @NASAWebb  available to view and download here 

The luminous, hot star Wolf-Rayet 124 (WR 124) is prominent at the center of the James Webb Space Telescope’s composite image in the constellation of Sagitta.

In the image, WR 124 is surrounded by a ring nebula of expelled material known as M1-67. It is one of the fastest runaway stars in the Milky Way. The image is a  combination of near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths of light from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team.

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