JWST Sets Record for Early Mature Galaxies
The James Webb Space Telescope
sees mature stars and galaxies
too early for big bang theory
Once just a speck of light, now revealed as the biggest known galaxy in the early Universe (University of Melbourne, 12 March 2024). Listen to Drs Kit Boyett and Michele Trenti moan about the state of affairs in cosmology since JWST started sending in photo after photo of early mature galaxies that should not have had time to form. Trying to smile for the camera about this “fruitful period for discovery,” they have to admit that the data are not what they expected. “Detailed pictures of one of the first galaxies show growth in the early Universe was much faster than first thought,” the subtitle reads. Another possibility, though, is that the universe is not that old.
Observations are now entering the first 500 million years after the Big Bang when the Universe was less than five per cent of its current age. For humans, this time would place the Universe firmly in the toddler stage.
Yet the galaxies we are observing are certainly not infantile, with new observations revealing galaxies more massive and mature than previously expected for such early times, helping to rewrite our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution.
Translation: our “understanding” never existed. We have to throw the manuscript in the trash and start over.
A galaxy they focused on, labeled Gz9p3 (redshift z=9, considered 510 million years after the big bang) is “far more massive and mature than expected for such a young Universe, already containing several billion stars.” In fact, it is 10 times more massive than other galaxies from that epoch. How could such a large body form in short order? This one galaxy is sounding a death knell to notions that galaxies must have formed gradually over billions of years.
That’s not all. They are deducing that this galaxy formed in a merger with another galaxy—something thought to have occurred only much later. To make matters worse, the spectrum of this galaxy shows the presence of heavy elements like silicon, carbon and iron. Those are supposed to have formed only after the first generation of stars matured and blew up in supernovas, seeding the galaxy with “metals” (to astronomers, elements heavier than hydrogen and helium). Where is there any evidence for so-called Population III stars of pure hydrogen? The earliest stars already show metallicity.
More complaints follow:
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It is not only the size of the galaxies that is surprising but also the speed with which they grew to such a chemically mature state.
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These observations of Gz9p3 show that galaxies were able to accumulate mass quickly in the early Universe through mergers, with star formation efficiencies higher than we expected.
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This and other observations using the JWST are causing astrophysicists to adjust their modelling of the early years of the Universe.
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Our cosmology isn’t necessarily wrong, but our understanding of how quickly galaxies formed probably is, because they are more massive than we ever believed could be possible.
How is their [big bang] cosmology “not necessarily wrong” in the light of early mature galaxies? Is galaxy evolution looking like the Cambrian explosion in biology? Are they having to invoke punctuated equilibrium models for stellar and galactic evolution?
Putting their happy masks back on, the two try to sound excited. “There has never been a more exciting time to make sense of the mysteries of the early Universe.” Yes, it is exciting to toss what you believed into the bin.
The James Webb telescope may have found some of the very 1st stars in the universe (Live Science, 6 March 2024). A week before the above article appeared, Keith Cooper wrote for Live Science about another record early-mature galaxy named GN-z11 that is even older: at redshift z=11, considered to be 430 million years after the big bang.
GN-z11 is the most luminous galaxy known at this particular redshift, and indeed this has become a common theme for high redshift galaxies now almost regularly being found in the early universe by the JWST. Many of them appear much brighter than what our models of galaxy formation predict they should be. Those predictions are based on the standard model of cosmology.
In that article, Cooper claimed “indirect evidence” for Population III stars as theory predicts. But an astronomy team led by Roberto Maiolino of the University of Cambridge also found evidence for a supermassive black hole in that bright galaxy—at least as part of an explanation for why it was so bright in JWST images. Supermassive black holes had to eat a lot of stars to get that big: two million solar masses, they believe.
The team also detected a powerful sleet of radiation flowing off the accretion disk of matter swirling around the black hole as well as ionized chemical elements typically found near accreting black holes. It is the most distant supermassive black hole discovered so far, the team says, and its gluttonous appetite leads to its accretion disk becoming dense and hot, and shining brightly. This, combined with the Population III stars, is what makes GN-z11 shine so brightly, the researchers believe, without breaking standard cosmology as some have prematurely claimed.
Too late. Standard cosmology was already broken 22 years ago when the problem of early mature galaxies was first announced. It has only broken into more pieces since then. (Search “early maturity” here at CEH.)
NASA’s Webb, Hubble Telescopes Affirm Universe’s Expansion Rate, Puzzle Persists (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 11 March 2024). Another mystery is the Hubble Tension. Big bangers are failing their homework. It’s making them tense.
When you are trying to solve one of the biggest conundrums in cosmology, you should triple check your homework. The puzzle, called the “Hubble Tension,” is that the current rate of the expansion of the universe is faster than what astronomers expect it to be, based on the universe’s initial conditions and our present understanding of the universe’s evolution.
When they double-checked the Hubble data on Cepheid variable stars (a central distance measure), they couldn’t explain the Hubble Tension away as an artifact of intervening dust. When they tripled-checked it with the SHOES project, they couldn’t chalk it up to measurement error. It must be due to “something else”—
Hubble has been measuring the current rate of the universe’s expansion for 30 years, and astronomers want to eliminate any lingering doubt about its accuracy. Now, Hubble and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have tag-teamed to produce definitive measurements, furthering the case that something else – not measurement errors – is influencing the expansion rate.
“With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility we have misunderstood the universe,” said Adam Riess, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Keith Cooper writes more about this standoff at Space.com Isn’t it odd that some scientists get all excited about being proved wrong and misunderstanding the subject of their core expertise? Has the time come to think outside the Big Bang Box?
According to Genesis, God created a mature universe on the 4th Day of creation. Is that not what astronomers are looking at? Maybe if they stepped out of their atheistic, naturalistic straitjacket, they would see that “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). That’s more exciting than having your career ideas get falsified.
Hear Dr Danny Faulkner, creationist astronomer, describe the status of the big bang theory in the film Is Genesis History?