Modern Cosmology Staggers

If previous findings knocked
cosmologists dizzy, the latest
may be the knockout punch

 

For 25 years we have been following the “early maturity” theme: full-grown objects appearing earlier than thought. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), long planned to reveal the secrets of big bang cosmology, has instead been a primary culprit causing grief to secular astronomers (see 23 Jan 2025), making them worry that a major overhaul is needed. The latest news is like your mechanic telling you the car is totaled and irreparable.

Mapping space: Largest map of the universe announced (Univ of California Santa Barbara, 5 June 2025). There’s nothing like a big data set to shed light on reality. The reality of this data set is not what cosmologists expected. If you remember the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, showing 10,000 galaxies in a tiny spot of space, that was big news in 2004. But if you could print that jaw-dropping image on a standard sheet of paper, the latest map would fill a 13 x 13 foot mural. What does this largest-ever map of the universe show? Basically, it shows “10 times more early galaxies than expected,” the headline on Science Daily gasps.

In the name of open science, the multinational scientific collaboration COSMOS on Thursday has released the data behind the largest map of the universe. Called the COSMOS-Web field, the project, with data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), consists of all the imaging and a catalog of nearly 800,000 galaxies spanning nearly all of cosmic time. And it’s been challenging existing notions of the infant universe.

Watch the “animated zoom-out from the center of the COSMOS-Web field to a full-size comparison between COSMOS-Web and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field” in UCSB’s press release.

Why is the new map challenging existing notions of the infant universe? Before the map was built, astronomers estimated that early galaxies would be “extremely rare”—but they are not. UCSB physics professor Caitlin Casey commented on why they were thought to be rare:

“It makes sense — the Big Bang happens and things take time to gravitationally collapse and form, and for stars to turn on. There’s a timescale associated with that,” Casey explained. “And the big surprise is that with JWST, we see roughly 10 times more galaxies than expected at these incredible distances. We’re also seeing supermassive black holes that are not even visible with Hubble.” And they’re not just seeing more, they’re seeing different types of galaxies and black holes, she added.

The next paragraph was printed in larger type so as not to miss the point:

“Since the telescope turned on we’ve been wondering ‘Are these JWST datasets breaking the cosmological model? Because the universe was producing too much light too early; it had only about 400 million years to form something like a billion solar masses of stars. We just do not know how to make that happen.”

Astronomers discover most powerful cosmic explosions since the Big Bang (Space.com, 5 June 2025). The cosmological woes extend down to individual objects that are looking far more energetic than expected. New objects are being called “the most powerful cosmic explosions since the Big Bang”—

These incredibly energetic explosions occur when stars with masses at least three times greater than that of the sun are torn apart by supermassive black holes. While such events have been witnessed before, astronomers say some of the ones recently discovered are powerful enough to be classified as a new phenomenon: extreme nuclear transients (ENTs).

The ENTs also last much longer than previously known tidal disruption events (TDEs). As the article indicates, the new phenomena are not causing astronomers to give up on the big bang theory (yet), but these “most powerful known explosions in the universe” will have to be incorporated into the standard model somehow. Jason Hinkle of the University of Hawaii remarked,

But TDEs typically last only a matter of hours; the events studied by Hinkle and other researchers appeared to last much longer. “Not only are ENTs far brighter than normal tidal disruption events, but they remain luminous for years, far surpassing the energy output of even the brightest known supernova explosions,” Hinkle said in the statement.

One particular TDE is 25 times brighter than the brightest known supernova, he said, outputting “more than the amount of energy that would be released by 100 suns throughout their entire lifetime” (which is assumed to be about 10 billion years). The discovery was announced in Science Advances on 4 June 2025.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is about to totally transform astronomy (New Scientist, 13 June 2025). Something to look forward to: more upsets. “With the ability to scan the entire southern night sky every three days, the huge Vera C. Rubin Observatory could be about to start solving the mysteries of the universe, from dark matter to Planet Nine.” First images expected 23 June.

‘Cosmic miracle!’ James Webb Space Telescope discovers the earliest galaxy ever seen (Space.com, 30 May 2025). Prior to the COSMOS Map announcement, Robert Lea at Space.com wrote about another record breaker: the “mother of all early galaxies” called MoM z14.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) excels at a lot of things, but there are two things it does better than any other scientific instrument in human history: spotting early galaxies and breaking its own records!

Now, the $10 billion NASA space telescope has done both things again, detecting a galaxy that existed just 280 million years after the Big Bang, a feat that the team behind this research has dubbed a “cosmic miracle.”

This early galaxy has the highest redshift of any galaxy, z = 14.44. This now breaks the record of the JADES-GS-z14 galaxy reported here on 25 March 2025. According to the standard timeline, this sets MoM z14 at 280 million years after the big bang.

Science is not supposed to deal in miracles. Finagle’s Rules, however, allow scientists to cross their fingers behind their back. Rule #6 states, “Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them.”

The old Cosmos of Carl Sagan had the big bang all wrapped up as solid science. To him, the Cosmos was all that is, was, or ever will be. Sagan championed the big bang, atheism, and Darwinian evolution and treated these as solid fact, mocking “religion” as being anti-science. He believed there could be a million advanced civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

Wouldn’t it be amusing to see his smug face after hearing about the new COSMOS map that is “challenging existing notions” like his?

Godless philosophy, pointless to me;
None to cause us, but Cosmos—
All that is, was, and ever shall be.

From the big bang, to the slime soup,
To the heat death, dark and old,
Godless philosophy, it leaves me cold.

There is an alternative, you know. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth… He made the stars also.” Oh, but that won’t do. That involves miracles!

Well, choose your miracles, bro.

Godless philosophy, no God to love?
No Designer to guide Earth,
Through the night with a light from above.

From the big bang, to the slime soup,
To the heat death, dark and old,
Godless philosophy; it leaves me cold,
Godless philosophy, it leaves me cold.

—from the Darwin Hymnbook