The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has made remarkable discoveries in its short time of observations. Recent research has examined the data and determined that the distant galaxies discovered by the JWST are compatible with our understanding of cosmology. As time passed, density differences emerged which led to the formation of the first stars and eventually the first galaxies. The existence of these galaxies in the young universe thus supports the Big Bang theory.
However, several claims arose that the telescope had found galaxies in the early universe that would make the Big Bang model, or the so-called ΛCDM cosmology model, invalid. JWST detected massive galaxies in the young universe that challenged the ΛCDM cosmology model. JWST can look back almost 13 billion years, at which is it expected that galaxies should be much smaller as they have been created ‘only’ a couple of million years ago. As some of the discovered galaxies were estimated to be relatively large, discussion arose about the Bing Bang model.
However, the estimated distances to these galaxies relied on imprecise methods of determining distances to the galaxies. To determine this distance, a relatively unreliable method called photometric redshift was used which relies upon the spectrum of the amount of radiation being emitted by a galaxy.
To address this, a team of researchers used a more accurate method called spectroscopic redshift to measure the distances to galaxies. They found galaxies at similar distances but with smaller masses, alleviating the tension with cosmological models.
However, astronomers may yet confirm the distance to a very large galaxy in the early universe which may force us to rethink our understanding of galaxy formation or even the Big Bang theory. In science, it is important to keep an open mind to new discoveries but the claims made based on the JWST data aren’t enough to worry about yet.
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