The first observations of the universe by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cannot be explained by modern cosmological models. These models estimate the age of the universe at 13.8 billion years, based on the expanding big bang concept. My research proposes a model that puts the age of the universe at 26.7 billion years, explaining JWST’s observations of “impossible early galaxies”.
Impossible Early Galaxies refers to the fact that some galaxies from the birth of the universe (500 to 800 million years after the Big Bang) have disks and bulges similar to galaxies that have gone through a long evolutionary process. And small galaxies have more mass than large galaxies, which is the opposite of what’s expected.
frequency and distance
This age estimate is derived from the expansion rate of the universe by measuring the redshift of spectral lines in the light emitted by distant galaxies. The previous explanation for redshift was based on the hypothesis that light loses energy as it travels through space. This “tired light” explanation was rejected as it failed to explain most of the observations.
The redshift of light is similar to the Doppler effect of sound: Sounds have a higher frequency (pitch) as they approach, and a lower frequency as they move away. A lower frequency of light, a redshift, indicates that an object is moving away from us; The greater the distance to the galaxy, the higher the recession rate and redshift.
An alternative explanation for the redshift is the Doppler effect: Distant galaxies are moving away from us at rates proportional to their distance, indicating that the universe is expanding. After two astronomers from Bell Labs, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, accidentally discovered the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in 1964, most astronomers opted for the expanding universe model; the steady-state model could not explain this satisfactorily.
The expansion rate essentially determines the age of the universe. Until the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s, uncertainties in the rate of expansion estimated the age of the universe to be between seven and 20 billion years. Other observations led to the accepted value of 13.8 billion years, laying the Big Bang model at the heart of cosmology.
Limitations of previous models
A study published last year proposes solving the impossible problem with early galaxies using the tired light model. But tired light cannot satisfactorily explain other cosmological observations, such as the redshift of supernovae and the uniformity of cosmic microwave background radiation.
I tried combining the standard big bang model with the tired light model to see how it fits the supernova data and the JWST data, but it didn’t fit the latter. However, this brought the age of the universe to 19.3 billion years.
Next, I tried to construct a hybrid model that included the tired light and cosmological model I had developed based on the evolutionary coupling constants proposed by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1937. This matched both data well, but nearly double the age of the universe.
The new model increases the galaxy formation time by 10-20 times compared to the standard model, providing enough time for well-developed “impossible” early galaxies to form as observed. As with any model, it will need to provide a satisfactory explanation for any observations that the standard cosmological model does not offer.
Mixing models
The approach of mixing the two models to explain new observations is not new. Isaac Newton believed in his theory of light that light propagates in particles; This theory was valid until the 19th century when it was replaced by the wave theory of light to explain the diffraction patterns observed in monochromatic light.
Albert Einstein revived the particle-like nature of light to explain the photoelectric effect; light has dual properties: particle-like in some observations and wave-like in others. It has since become well established that all particles have such dual properties.
Another way to measure the age of the universe is to estimate the age of stars in the globular clusters of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Globular clusters contain up to one million stars, and all of them appear to have formed simultaneously in the early universe.
Assuming that all galaxies and clusters began to form at the same time, the age of the oldest star in the cluster will give the age of the Universe (except when galaxies begin to form). For some stars, such as Methuselah, which is thought to be the oldest in the galaxy, astrophysical simulations give ages greater than the age of the universe determined by the standard model, which is impossible.
Einstein believed that the universe was the same, homogeneous, isotropic, and timeless for observation from any point at any time. To explain the observed redshift of distant galaxies in such a stationary universe, which seems to increase in proportion to their distance (Hubble’s law), Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky proposed the tired theory of light in 1929.
new information
Although some Hubble Space Telescope observations pointed to an unexpected early galaxy problem, the problem was not pinpointed until the JWST launch in December 2021 and the data it has provided since mid-2022.
To defend the standard model of the big bang, astronomers have tried to solve the problem by compressing the time scale for the formation of non-physical highly accumulating massive stars and primordial black holes. But consensus is emerging on new physics to explain these JWST observations. Source
Source: Port Altele
