James Webb Telescope: “Red monster galaxies” problem for the standard model
The James Webb Telescope once again discovered galaxies that form stars so early and so effectively that they don't fit into the standard model of cosmology.
Photomontage of the three "red monsters"
(Image: NASA/CSA/ESA, M. Xiao & P. A. Oesch (University of Geneva), G. Brammer (Niels Bohr Institute), Dawn JWST Archive)
An international research team has used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to discover three "red monster galaxies" in the early universe that "challenge" our current theories on galaxy formation. This was made public by the University of Geneva, from where the work was led. According to the study, we see all three in a state less than a billion years after the Big Bang and yet they are almost as massive as our Milky Way. The discovery represents "an exciting puzzle", says co-author Stijn Wuyts from the University of Bath. At the same time, his team assures that the discovery does not fundamentally contradict the so-called standard model of cosmology.
Grown much faster than thought possible
As the group explains, it is assumed that galaxies in the early cosmos grew steadily and comparatively slowly, controlled by huge structures of dark matter. Typically, only around 20 percent of the gas present would become stars, but the three galaxies would cast doubt on this. They suggest that galaxies at the beginning of the cosmos grew much faster and formed stars much more efficiently than thought possible. Overall, stars were formed almost twice as efficiently in all three galaxies than in others of this epoch and also much later than in ordinary galaxies. Because they contain a lot of dust, they are only visible to the JWST, namely strongly reddened.
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The unexpected properties of the three galaxies would change our understanding of early galaxy formation, says lead author Mengyuan Xiao. Once again, they would contribute to the finding that the James Webb Space Telescope finds too many galaxies too early in the universe. Nevertheless, the team sees no fundamental contradiction to the standard model of cosmology. The central theory of the development of our universe would therefore only have to be adapted to explain such rapidly growing, early galaxies. Other researchers do not see it this way. They believe that the early galaxies are an indication of a larger error.
Just this week, four researchers from the USA and Italy presented their theory that the many early and unexpectedly massive galaxies in the JWST data set cannot be explained by the standard model of cosmology. They believe that they could be better explained by so-called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). This not only predicts much faster evolving galaxies in the early universe, it also manages without dark matter. This is not the first attempt to position the theory, which was developed 40 years ago, as an alternative. The discovery of the three "red monsters" is now presented in the scientific journal Nature.
(mho)
