In the Beginning, There Was a Theory... JWST Data Supports Big Bang Challengers.
JoeMerchant writes:
We have been getting stories for a while about how JWST observations don't line up with the current Big Bang timelines. I'm certain there will be "Big Bang Band Aid" theories at least until the current crop of Astrophysicists who built their entire career on the semi-biblical "In the Beginning..." theory of where it all started have, themselves, died off. Meanwhile, there is also never a shortage of contrarian theories out there, and one of them is starting to get some support from the JWST observations of the "deep past" - which, maybe, isn't so deep after all.
Current theories for the redshift observed in more distant galaxies rely on the postulate: "photons travel at the speed of light and arrive unchanged at their destination, exactly when they left their source, from their perspective."
There are other theories. One, in particular, explains the observed redshifts with the idea that photons "get tired" on their Billions of light year journeys and lose a little frequency / gain a little wavelength along the way. JWST observations that are seeing mature galaxies back at, and before, the previously presumed start of "it all" may align better with the less well developed tiring photon theory than they do with the Big Bang. Not only does the "tired light" theory directly explain red-shift, but the observations of wavelength shift with respect to galactic rotation seem to be lining up better with "tired light" than "Big Bang," too...
Around the same time, Fritz Zwicky, a well-known astronomer, came up with a different idea.
He proposed that the redshift we see in distant galaxies - basically a shift in the light spectrum towards red - might not be because those galaxies are speeding away.
Instead, he thought that the light photons from these galaxies could be losing energy, or "tiring out," as they travel through space.
This energy loss could make it look like the farther galaxies are moving away from us faster than they actually are.
"[...] But the confidence of some astronomers in the Big Bang theory started to weaken when the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) saw first light."
What if the Universe isn't expanding at all, but instead is quite a bit bigger than we have been guessing it is?
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