Katie MackHave you heard about JWST seeing galaxies that shouldn’t exist? There’s more to that story!
My latest for BBC Science Focus: https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/james-webb-space-telescope-ancient-galaxies
Nick AppleyardNoting the caveats about the observations, if this does mess up the cosmological age/distance curve then what are the implications?
Is dark energy then trashed, for example?
@nick_appleyard Nah nothing like that. At worst, it would require altering the expansion rate in the early universe somehow
@AstroKatie or maybe it’s a Hubble Bubble?
No idea whether that explains anything, I just enjoyed typing it.
The cat who walks thru walls@nick_appleyard @AstroKatie As I understand it (and of course ICBW), if it does indeed turn out that those galaxies are too massive, that would require a rethinking of our current understanding of how the universe formed ("the first three minutes" and all). Right now, I'd say the only answer could be "no one knows", but reworded as "we need more data" - it would be yet another case in the history of science when the widely accepted theory would be incapable of explaining the empirical evidence, so modifications would be necessary. So, no one knows :)