When the James Webb Space Telescope began collecting data, it gave us an unprecedented view of deep space. The faint, redshifted galaxies that Hubble saw as mere specks of light turned out to be objects of structure and form. And astronomers faced a certain problem. These early galaxies seemed too advanced and too large to form within the accepted timeline of the universe. This sparked a series of articles that boldly claimed that the JWST refuted the big bang. Now a new article Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society He argues that the problem is not that the galaxies are very advanced, but that the universe is twice as old as we thought. 26.7 billion years to be exact. That’s a bold claim, but does the data really support it?

The model proposed in the article starts with something known as tired light. In the tired light model, the light spontaneously loses energy over time. So photons turn red when they travel billions of light years through space. Therefore, the light of distant galaxies is redshifted, not because of cosmic expansion, but because the light naturally reddens over time. The idea of ​​tired light has been around since Edwin Hubble first observed cosmic expansion as a way to support the idea of ​​a static universe. It fell out of favor when evidence of cosmic expansion emerged, and gained some popularity as Webb’s observations began to spread.

We’ve long known that tired light doesn’t work on its own, so this article adds a new twist to the universal physical constants. Quantities like the speed of light, the charge of an electron, or the gravitational constant seem to be built into the very fabric of the universe. They have values ​​because of how the universe was formed and are generally believed to be unchanging over time. We have geological and astronomical observations that show that the physical constants have not changed for at least a few billion years.

Cosmic microwave background observations are inconsistent with extinct light. Credit: Ned Wright

But this new article claims that if you combine tired light and changing physical constants, you can end up with a universe that looks younger than it actually is. Essentially, tired light gives you the cosmological redshift you observe, and the gradual shift in physical constants means that these mature distant galaxies are billions of years old, not just 100 million years old. After adjusting the tired light and variable physical constants, for they matched the data, and you get a 26.7 billion year universe.

Does the model work? Yes, but there are two problems with that. the first is that tuning theories are weak theories. Although this model can be built based on observational data, there is no physical motivation to do so. There are many models that can be adjusted to fit the data, which are not the same as having a solid physical model. The author of the article claims that there may be some mechanism that causes the tired light and physical constants to shift as desired, but there are still many errors in the model.

The second problem is that the JWST observations do not exclude a standard universe that is 13.7 billion years old. Galaxies are more complex than some computer simulations predict, but this is not surprising given the limitations of large structure models. There are many ways to rapidly evolve early galaxies that do not require rewriting cosmology.

But even if there is no strong physical motivation to build this model, the work is still worthwhile. This is the type of paper that thinks out of the box and is a great way to make sure we don’t get hung up on older models just because they work. This new model is unlikely to reverse standard cosmology, but as long as ideas can be tested and disproved like this model, there’s no harm in adding it to the idea pile. Source