I'm asking this for those who have followed the latest from the James Webb telescope more closely than I have. If I understand the new story correctly there are early galaxies that formed more quickly than would have been possible following the BB theory.
I'm not up with all the latest results. However, James Webb is producing lots of puzzling (as in unexpected) results, which tend to get astronomers scratching their heads. If galaxies appear to have formed more quickly than expected, there are a few possible explanations, such as: Something is wrong in our theories of how galaxies form. Something is wrong with our cosmological model (BB theory etc.) Something is wrong with the observations. In this case, if I had to put money on it, I'd say that the solution in this case will turn out to be (1), rather than (2). I can't think of how (3) could be the problem in this case. But, like I said, I haven't read anything much about this, and I'm not an astronomer/cosmologist, so all 3 are live options.
I think I'd put my money on 2 or 1 and 2, although 2 kind of implies 1 as well. My money would be (I think) on whatever the theory is involving one Universe ending and leading to the start of a new Universe. It's all just guessing on my part of course. I tend to not think we are wrong (to that degree) about how galaxies form to be off by that much. By the way, this is just my opinion and I'm not being paid to promote any theory and I've never been an astrophysicist although I own several telescopes and have read several books on astrophysics so I may have some biases.
It's too early to say. Just paycheck hysteria stemming from the usual "publish/speak or perish" need to opportunistically capitalize on premature or tentative information. Do JWST’s results contradict the Big Bang? https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/jwsts-contradict-big-bang/ EXCERPTS (Ethan Siegel): For one, the early surveys that are pointing to these conflicts are coming from very small, and possibly atypical, regions of the sky... [...] For another, it’s possible that light from an active supermassive black hole at the centers of these galaxies is “polluting” our view, and making us think that these galaxies are more massive and rich in stars than they actually are... [...] For yet another, it’s possible that these galaxies aren’t actually brighter and more massive than we expect — at least, not by the amount we’ve initially concluded — because JWST is overperforming. [...] And finally, it’s possible that we’ve gotten some detail like gas cooling, halo identification, the nonlinear growth of structure, or the effects of stellar feedback or magnetic fields incorrect... [...] Without better data — i.e., a deep, large-area, robustly calibrated, spectroscopic survey — we don’t even know if these galaxies truly possess anomalous properties... [...] And even if they do, there are an enormous number of astrophysical possibilities that invoke no fundamentally new physics that could potentially account for why these galaxies would exist with these large masses and brightnesses... [...] A lot of people are making a lot of early, extraordinary claims about these galaxies, but we have to keep in mind that sound, responsible science progresses slowly, and always follows the evidence. The important thing isn’t to be the first one to speculate as to what the ultimately right answer is, but to get it right without unjustifiably crying “wolf” along the way._
