JWST sees the sea of galaxies in all its glory at last!

[Jacob Navia]

[[Mod. note -- I'm sorry for the delay in processing this article, which
reached the moderation system on 2021-08-18. -- jt]]

https://www.science.org/content/article/webb-telescope-reveals-unpredicted-bounty-bright-galaxies-early-universe

<quote>
The James Webb Space Telescope has only been watching the sky for a few
weeks, and it has already delivered a startling finding: tens, hundreds,
maybe even 1000 times more bright galaxies in the early universe than
astronomers anticipated.

...

Within days after Webb began observations, it spotted a candidate galaxy
that appears to have been shining brightly when the universe was just 230
million years old, 1.7% of its current age, which would make it the most
distant ever seen. Surveys since then have shown that object is just one of
a stunning profusion of early galaxies, each small by today=E2=80=99s
standards, but more luminous than astronomers had expected.

...
something may be wrong in the current understanding of how the universe
evolves
</quote>

Well, this confirms what I have been thinking all the time since several
years. Maybe there is no "Big Bang" but a gargantuan gas cloud that started
to condense into galaxies 16, or 17 Gy ago.

Or maybe not, since we see the brightest ones at those enormous distances,
it is normal that we see the bright and younger ones. JWST has started
observing a few weeks ago. Maybe we will find old galaxies at100 My after
the supposed "bang" soon. The current record holder that I mentioned in
this group was at 230 My and it is but one of " a stunning profusion of
early galaxies," See "On the stunning abundance of super-early, massive
galaxies revealed by JWST" https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.00720

VERY interesting times.

jacob

[[Mod. note -- These are indeed exciting times to be an astronomer.

However, I think your hypothesis
> Maybe there is no "Big Bang" but a gargantuan gas cloud that started
> to condense into galaxies 16, or 17 Gy ago.
is falsified by the observation that the cosmic microwave temperature
was higher at high redshifts than it is today. A few references for
these observations are
(1) Srianand, Petitjean & Ledoux, Nature 408, 931 (2000),
"The cosmic microwave background radiation temperature at
a redshift of 2.34";
(2) Ge et al., Astrophysical Journal 474 (1997) 67,
astro-ph/9607145);
(3) Noterdaeme et al, http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.3164,
accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters;
(4) Sato et al, http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5625,
accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

That is, if we observe a galaxy at redshift 2.34 (say), and we know
that the CMB temperature there at the time we observe that galaxy
was significantly different from (larger than) today's 2.73 K, that
implies that we can't explain cosmological redshifts by a simple
expansion in a flat unchanging space -- there must have been an overall
expansion of space in ordre to redshift that higher temperature down
to today's 2.73 K.
-- jt]]