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Topics: NASA, Space, Science, Technology
Tom Wood
Topics: NASA, Space, Science, Technology
Scientists are a bit concerned because the James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding galaxies that – in their thinking – shouldn’t actually exist.
Without getting too far into it – as it’s really complicated – the basic idea seems to be that some of the galaxies, spotted through the huge NASA telescope, are a lot more mature than they were previously thought to be - given where they are in the universe.
Because they’re bigger and seem to be around as mature as our own galaxy, we might have to have a rethink about our understanding of the universe, because we might be missing some fundamental knowledge.
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Now, some new research suggests exactly that, having ‘stress tested’ the new galaxies to attempt to understand how they were formed.
So, unless the science is wrong, there’s something that could be missing from our understanding, and that’s something that the scientists are very wary about.
Mike Boylan-Kolchin, from the University of Texas at Austin, who is also the author of the new paper about the galaxies, said: “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.”
Now we’re about to get a bit more complex here.
So, Boylan-Kolchin’s paper suggests that the data from the James Webb telescope creates a big problem for our current understanding, because it calls into question the dark energy and cold dark matter paradigm, which is the guiding force behind our cosmology.
Ordinarily, galaxies convert around 10 percent of gas into stars, but these newly discovered galaxies would have to be changing almost all of that gas into stars.
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The above theory is theoretically possible, but it would represent a break from what scientists have been thinking.
That's a big deal given how established the science has been on the cosmos.
Of course, there will have to be more research done to fully determine what is going on, and that could prove that the observations made are incorrect, there might be supermassive black holes involved, which would give the appearance of a more massive galaxy.
Or, the galaxies could be from a later time than first expected, but made to look older because of issues with the images.
However, if this hypothesis is proven to be true, it would mean that scientists would have to have a little rethink about how they understand the cosmos, and the growth of galaxies.
Still, science is always open to change – they’ll just have to figure it out.