What has the James Webb Space Telescope learned so far? Is it finding galaxies that “break” cosmology? What will we learn next? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION (AUTO GENERATED)

I'd like to introduce you to a little galaxy named jades dash g s dash z 14 dash 0. It is the most distant known galaxy. It's unlikely to hold its title for long as the James Webb Space Telescope is designed to find even more distant galaxies. But for now, it reigns supreme. This galaxy, and we'll call it jade for short, has a redshift of 14.32, hence the, z 14 in its full name.

And it existed when the universe was only 290,000,000 years old. That's a toddler compared to the present day age of the universe of nearly 14000000000 years. Jade is small. It's only about 1600 light years across, but it's mighty. It's exceptionally bright and full of stars.

In fact, it might be a little too bright and too full of stars. And at 1600 light years across, while not a lot by modern present day universe standards, at that early epoch, it's a veritable behemoth of a galaxy. Jade is so young, so bright, and so large that some have openly wondered if it's even possible to explain the existence of Jade within our current understanding of the big bang. So what's going on? Are these galaxies breaking cosmology?

Or is there more to the story? Well, if this is your first time encountering me or this show, then one I'm about to say may come as a little bit of a surprise. If you're a regular, 1st, welcome back. And 2, you know exactly what I'm going to say next. If it's interesting, it's probably wrong.

This is my mantra whenever I see an exciting science headline or, for that matter, a research paper claiming something extraordinary. If it's interesting, it's probably wrong. Most results in science are boring and incremental and evolutionary. I'm, oh, I'm well, I'm only saying boring a little bit tongue in cheek. I am fascinated by even the tiniest minutiae of science.

I've written plenty of papers that many would consider boring, but I absolutely adore. And so I mean boring in the sense of not earth shattering or paradigm shifting or revolution igniting. That's what I mean. Most of science is incremental and evolutionary. Only very rarely does something truly groundbreaking come along.

And when it does, it's usually not apparent right away. It takes a lot of work, a lot of evidence to make the scientific community believe it. I mean, that's our job is to be and to have, like, organized skepticism. Now when I say it's interest if it's interesting, it's probably wrong. I'm talking more about science journalism, and you know I have a bone to pick with science journalism.

I love many work with many and love and adore many science journalists, but the overall paradigm of science journalism is kind of messed up. But that's why I don't get invited to a lot of science journalism parties. And I also have a bone to pick with my fellow scientists who play into it, which is why I don't get invited to a lot of science parties. Let me give you an example. There's a lot we don't understand about the early universe.

Ironically, we understand a lot about the extremely early universe when the universe was only a few 100000 years old, when the universe was a hot, dense plasma. We we actually understand the physics of that really, really well. We understand the light that emitted at that epoch. That's the cosmic microwave background. We're able to map it to incredibly high detail.

We actually have a really, really good, infant picture of the universe. And then we have a really, really well, a mostly good picture of the modern day universe, the nearby universe, our galaxy, nearby galaxies, maps of the large scale structure of the universe, how matter is arranged at the largest scales, the rise of dark energy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But it's the early ish parts, like the adolescent phase, the puberty phase of the universe that we actually don't know a lot. We have almost no observations, and our theories here are are you know, there are a lot of question marks. Let's put it that way.

Because as we're trying to understand the evolution of galaxies, they're they're in stars, the first stars in the first galaxies to appear in the universe as we're trying to understand this. There are a lot of variables. There are a lot of unknowns, and there are a lot of processes that might happen in the early universe, but we don't know for sure if if galaxy and star evolution follows this path or that path or this path over here or some weird mixture of all the paths, we really don't know. That's one of the primary reasons we launched the James Webb Space Telescope. Is to study the early universe and try to get at the 1st generation of stars and galaxies to help us understand their original evolution and development.

That's why we did it. And, yeah, James Webb took forever to build and was stupidly expensive and over budget and late. But we finally did get it up there and and got it to work, and it's working, and it's doing a great job and doing many things including, but not limited to, doing the things it was designed to do, like discover early galaxies and help us understand how the first galaxies emerged. And in 2023, out comes a batch of results of observations of extremely distant galaxies, ones with redshift of over 16. 16 here, so the redshift of a galaxy is as our universe expands, the light that is emitted from a galaxy gets stretched out as the universe expands.

In fact, this is why the James Webb is an infrared telescope because those early galaxies were emitting visible light, but that visible light got stretched out into the infrared wavelengths by the time it reached our Earth in our telescopes. And so, all we need to know here for our purposes is that a red shift of 16 is extremely far away. It represents this light was emitted when the universe was extremely young, somewhere between 202,150,000,000 years after the big bang. So that's a way distant galaxy, and the claims were that these galaxies were huge. They were almost Milky Way like.

They had lots of star formation. They even had spiral arms. They were downright weird. They were essentially fully matured galaxies in a universe that was way too young to host them. Matured galaxies in a universe that was way too young to host them.

We know that it took time, 100 of 1000000 of years for the first galaxies to emerge. We know there was a time before stars and before galaxies, and we know that the present day universe has lots of stars and galaxies, and there was a development phase in between. We used the James Webb to try to study that development phase. And here we are trying to understand infant, young galaxies, and we're seeing, like, fully grown adults sitting in a kindergarten class trying to squeeze into their desks. Cue the hoopla.

News outlets, reputable and irreputable, making the claim that these galaxies were breaking cosmology, that they violated our understanding of the big bang, and there was something big happening that, these galaxies, like, might disprove the big bang. They might force us to rewrite our basic understanding of the evolution of the universe. Even the New York Times got in on the action, and so did the scientists behind the paper. They provided quotes. They did interviews.

They talked all about their exciting, interesting result, That these galaxies were way too big for that young of a universe. But all those stories, at least the ones I've read through, left out one crucial piece of information. Those distance measures were very uncertain. It's not easy to measure the distance to astronomical objects. And it's not always easy to measure the redshift.

If you want to really nail down the redshift of a galaxy, what you do is you get a high resolution spectrum. You break the light down from that galaxy into all its different components. So you'll look at how much of this wavelength, how much of that wavelength, how much of this wavelength, etcetera, etcetera. And you look for certain patterns of known elements. Like, oh, man.

That's the, that's light emitted by hydrogen. That's light emitted by oxygen. That's light emitted by carbon dioxide. You look for those elements. You look for the patterns in the spectrum of those elements, and then you compare that to a hot glowing sample of of that same element that you have in the lab.

You look for the redshift. You measure it. That's pretty much nails it. If you can find defined features in the spectrum that you know have a good reference, a good benchmark, you can measure the redshift, and you can estimate the distance. But these were not done that way, because taking a spectrum, getting that detailed breakdown of the light from a distant galaxy in the extremely distant universe, tens of billions of light years away, is kind of hard.

And so astronomers being, one might say lazy, but a more charitable interpretation would be efficient. If you don't have the capabilities to get a really, really detailed breakdown of the spectrum to, like, really nail the redshift, you can do something called a photometric redshift, which is a very, very, very fuzzy picture of a galaxy, a very fuzzy breakdown of the light from the galaxy, and then kinda, sorta, a guessing at the redshift. It's used a lot. It's kinda handy. It has certain applications, and it was applied to these galaxies.

One of these galaxies, SEERS 93316, had this fuzzy kind of redshift, it's called photometric redshift, of 16.4, which was insane. That's, like, so young. That's a very, very, very distant galaxy. And then we've followed up months later with more detailed measurements, more detailed spectra. And that particular galaxy with a redshift of 16.4 was revised down to a redshift of 4.9.

That moves its age from 240000000 years after the big bang, which would be earth shattering way weird. There's no way we can explain this in standard cosmology, to an age of 1,200,000,000 years, which makes that galaxy just just a normal galaxy. And so the news reports surrounding these cosmology breaking galaxies, by and large, failed to mention this very important caveat that the estimates of the richest were very, very uncertain. I don't know if the scientists themselves mentioned this when talking to the reporters. If they didn't, shame on them.

If they did, this is exhibit a for why I believe that scientists need media training, but that's another topic. If it's interesting, it's probably wrong. My personal crusade aside, it doesn't mean that interesting results have to be wrong, and we always have to maintain the possibility that something surprising and paradigm shifting can be right around the corner. But what is more likely to happen? When we see something new and interesting, it's unlikely to shake the entire foundations of a physical theory.

That takes a lot, But it does. Interesting, new, different observations do offer the opportunity for us to learn something new. And not to completely change the paradigm, but to update it, maybe revise it, maybe add an interesting new twist. You know, it's unlikely. You know, the big bang cosmology might be wrong.

It could be wrong. I have to maintain the intellectual discipline as a scientist, to admit that possibility, but it would take a lot. And you know what? A 1000 years from now, we may you know, our future descendants may look back at us and say, could you believe that the universe used to be That they believe that the universe was smaller and hotter in the in the past. You know?

Okay. Fine. We're doing our best here. But it will take a lot. What's more likely to happen is that if we see something interesting or surprising, we get to add a new layer to the story.

We're not going to change the overall picture that the universe was smaller and hotter and denser in its past and has been expanding ever since. We're unlikely to change that. But maybe we change something else, something within that overall framework. That's interesting to me. It doesn't make for an interesting science headline or a big bold claim in a paper, which is where I draw the line.

If it's interesting, it's probably wrong. If you're trying to make a big bold claim that, you know, cosmology is getting torn down, probably wrong. And the same is true of any scientific theory. Like, we're not it's unlikely we're going to encounter something that will make us overturn the germ theory of disease anytime soon or evolutionary theory. Not anytime soon.

Or quantum mechanics, we're not turning that ship around. You get the idea. And that brings me to our new friend, Jade. Jade has 3 other friends, all at extremely high redshift, meaning that they existed when the universe was very young, right around 300,000,000 years old. They're all large and bright, not large and bright like the false claims of the cosmology breaking galaxies.

We're not finding a grown adult in a kindergarten classroom. We're finding, like like 2nd graders in a kindergarten classroom. Not necessarily cosmology breaking, but definitely cosmology bending. Interesting enough to warrant further study and force us to ask a very useful question. With our present day understanding of cosmology, can we explain the existence of these galaxies?

Well, what's our present day understanding of cosmology? Great question. Glad you asked. We understand and we believe that galaxies have not always been here, that there was a time in the distant past before the first stars and galaxies were here, And that all there was in the universe were tiny density fluctuations, just just little random bits, little pockets here and there that were denser than other places. And then once these seeds were planted, all you need is gravity and time, and material will fall on to those dense clumps, and they will get larger and larger and larger.

And, eventually, galaxies will form. They start out as pockets of dark matter. Dark matter is essential to the galaxy formation story. In fact, you can't get galaxies like the Milky Way without dark matter in the first place. So next time you think about dark matter, give it give it a hearty thanks.

Then matter starts to pool in, form some proto galaxies, some loose collections of gas. Pockets of these gas fragment and light up as stars, And then the galaxies start merging together, accumulating more stuff. And then over the course of the next few 100000000 years to a 1000000000 years, you get fully grown up galaxies. So we don't get to see this process play out in real time because we don't have we weren't around 13, 14,000,000,000 years ago, and we're not taking 100 of 1000000 of years to get our PhD dissertations done. So we we have to piece together this story.

We take a bunch of different observations. We try to push further back into the universe. We try to dig into the the earliest moments of the universe. In many ways, cosmology is a lot like archaeology. You know, we're just digging through the layers, looking at pottery shards, and trying to piece together a story.

And in this story, we can make some predictions that we can validate against observation. This is how science is. We have not combed every single corner of the universe. We have not mapped every single galaxy. There's a wealth of data that is yet to be tapped out there in the universe, which gives us the freedom to create predictions, to create theories.

And we can say, well, this is how I think galaxy formation proceeds, and then we can go out and test that idea. You know, classic science. And we can predict based on our understanding of how galaxies grow, the basic gravity that starts to pull galaxies together, and then the basic gas interactions that fragment it, the gas that flows in, and how it turns into stars, we can predict how many small galaxies we should see in the early universe, how many medium sized galaxies we should see, and how many big galaxies we should see. Generally, small galaxies should be more common than big galaxies, and then we calibrate this for the age of the universe that we're looking at. And so in the case of jade and its friends, we see some galaxies that seem a little bit too bright for their age.

Not necessarily size. Like, size wise, they seem okay, but they are very, very bright. They have a a high rate of star formation. They're a little bit too bright for what we originally say naively expected when we observe galaxies right around the 300000000 year mark after the big bang. We expected our galaxies to be a little bit dimmer.

Not obviously wrong, but a little bit like, what are the odds? You know, they're gonna be dimmer galaxies. They're gonna be brighter galaxies. There's gonna be in between galaxies. And but we just turned on the James Webb.

We just started observing, and then we get this batch of 4 really bright galaxies. Like, what are the odds that we're going to see some really bright galaxies the first time we turn this thing on? So faced with this observational reality, and by the way, Jade and its galaxy friends all have super confirmed redshifts. We're very sure of them. We have some options, and these options boil down to the age old scientific debate, a tradition that stretches back centuries.

Either the theorists are stupid or the observationalists are stupid. Either we are misunderstanding something about the basic physics of the early universe or we're misinterpreting our results. Not the redshifts, not the brightnesses. No. Those are nailed down, but, like, what this means.

I mean, we're talking about 4 galaxies here at the time of recording of this episode that seem a little bit too bright. There are a lot of possible interpretations. Now on one side, maybe the theorists are stupid. Maybe our fundamental picture of cosmology is wrong. Maybe our fundamental picture of cosmology is generally right, but we're missing something big.

We need to make a big change to the overall picture. And maybe the picture is almost entirely right, but we're missing something minor, like some little detail, in in some sort of, like, complicated astrophysics sense. And maybe we need to contribute to Patreon. That's patreon.com/ pmsutter. Listen.

If if you have thought about contributing and you haven't done so, just consider this. Maybe if you started contributing, we would be able to solve all the problems in modern cosmology. I'm not making promises, but I'm holding that out there as a possibility. But, seriously, I can't thank you enough for all of your contributions. It it means the world to me, that you continue to support this show every single month.

That's patreon.com /pmsutter. So on one end of the spectrum, on the theory spectrum, it's like we can go down in scales. If we're gonna make a change to our understanding of how galaxies evolve, we have a lot of options. We can start way up at the top, and we we can change fundamental cosmology. Like, we can rewrite the story of the big bang.

We can go somewhere medium, like, maybe we need to change some major ingredient in the universe. Maybe there's something we weren't expecting. And then maybe there it's buried some down in some tiny little detail. So for example, maybe we need to replace our concordance cosmology, Lambda CDM cosmology, our picture of the universe with dark matter, dark energy. Maybe we just need to chuck the whole thing and replace it with something else.

Maybe that would how how would this solve it? Good question. Well, in this case, we're estimating the age of these galaxies to be around 300000000 years after the big bang, but that's assuming a cosmological model. What we actually observe are the redshifts, and we plug that into the model to get an age. But if the model is wrong, the age is wrong.

So if you replace it with a different model, maybe these galaxies actually lived, like, 500000000 years or 600000000 years after the Big Bang, in which case they would have had plenty of time to evolve. Maybe it's something in between. Maybe we're not chucking out the entirety of Big Bang cosmology, But maybe they're, like, weird stuff, weird big stuff. Like, maybe they're 5th forces of nature. You know, maybe they're more than the 4 fundamental forces of nature that are playing around and messing with stuff.

Maybe dark energy, which we thought way back when was just hiding in the shadows in the background and then only emerged 1000000000 of years later. Maybe dark energy played a bigger role in the early universe than we originally thought. Or maybe it's some, like, super complicated astrophysics. Maybe it's way down in the weeds. Like, once we start playing around with, how galaxies actually form, maybe there's other stuff.

Maybe maybe big black holes form really, really quickly, faster than the galaxies do. And so, in this case, you might have a galaxy that's only 1600 light years across, but it already has a nucleus with a supermassive black hole at its core, and then the gravity of this supermassive black hole triggers more star formation, maybe these galaxies in the early universe are just burstier, for lack of a better term. Maybe they're better able to make bright stars than more modern galaxies because maybe there's more supernova feedback or interactions between the stars, and they just light up more than a typical modern day galaxy does. We are looking at galaxies in the case of Jade and its friends. These are galaxies that are among the first galaxies to appear in the universe.

Maybe they have some populations of the very, very first stars to appear in the universe. And maybe those first stars were much, much brighter and larger and survived from multiple generations than than we expected. And so just jade just looks brighter because that's how stars were back then. Maybe the fundamental process of star formation proceeds differently in the early universe than it does in the modern day universe. You know, we're calibrating our understanding of the growth of galaxies based on what we can see in the nearby universe where, okay, if you have this much dark matter and then this much gas, piling in, this is these are the kinds of populations of stars you expect to see.

Maybe that story doesn't fit in the early universe. So that's the range of possibilities for how theorists might be stupid. All the way from we need to chuck Big Bang Cosmology to we need to really rewrite there is some major new thing happening in the universe to maybe it's just complicated astrophysics. And before I continue, I do need to mention that this show is sponsored by BetterHelp, and I want to talk quickly about your self care nonnegotiables. What are the things that you don't ever let yourself skip?

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Okay. What about the observers? Are they being stupid? Well, we have some options here. Maybe the relationship between brightness and mass is different in the early universe.

In the modern day universe, we've calibrated our measurements where we can look at a galaxy. We can measure how bright it is. And from there, we have a very solid estimate of how massive the galaxy is. But hey. Between you and me, less than 1% of a mass of a galaxy goes into star formation.

So if you look at, say, the Andromeda galaxy, and it's beautiful, and it's got tons of stars, you could see it with the naked eye, and it's so gorgeous. You're looking at less than 1% of the mass of that galaxy. Most of it is in dark matter, and then the next biggest chunk is just random gas clouds. But we're able to establish that relationship. And then but then maybe that relationship is different in the early universe.

So that when we go out and make these observations and we see jade and we say, woah. Jade is bright for its mass, for its size. But that's calibrated on our present day understanding of galaxies. Maybe our understanding of the relationship between mass and brightness is flawed when it comes to the early universe. Maybe we're we're biased to find these standouts, and they don't necessarily represent the class average.

You know, everyone who went to school, there is that one kid that was, like, super tall, taller than everybody all through grade school, all through elementary school. Maybe we just happen to see the tall ones because they stand out. We Jade and its friends happen to be bright because and we happen to see them because they are the easiest to see. When we turn on our James Webb Space Telescope, when we start scanning the distant universe, it's easiest to see the super bright ones because they're bright. They stand out.

They're easier to study. And then maybe future campaigns that dig a little deeper, scan a little more carefully. Once we we get a better understanding of how to make these observations, we start to see more dimmer ones. And that Jade and its friends are just standing out. And that once we get a larger sample of galaxies, we'll see that, okay, these were just like the weirdo extreme ones, and it turns out most galaxies when the universe was 300,000,000 years old are exactly what we expect.

These are all possibilities. Some of these options are more probable than others, but we can't yet tell which one is more correct, based solely on the evidence. So where does that leave us? Even though these galaxies aren't breaking cosmology, it doesn't mean that we don't get to be excited to learn something new about the universe. Cosmology, just like any scientific theory, is nuanced.

There are big pictures, and there are small pictures. There are big overview, fundamental groundwork statements, and then there's a lot of little details. And it's perfectly possible. In fact, it happens every single day. This is how science evolves, where we can nail the big picture, and the big picture doesn't change for decades or even centuries and still not understand the little corners.

Every single scientific theory in the world has shortcomings. It has things that it is not able to adequately explain. That is the nature of scientific investigation into the universe. It's not perfect. And it's perfectly possible for the big bang cosmology picture to be 100% correct, but we we're not understanding the details, especially when it comes to the evolution of galaxies, which is beyond nuanced.

As you might imagine, this is a highly complicated process. There are a lot of unknowns. We don't fully understand the relationship between normal and dark matter, especially in the early universe. We don't understand the role of interactions among these early galaxies. We don't understand the role of black holes, feedback from supernova in the early universe.

We don't know we don't even know how the first stars form, how they light up, when they light up, how big they get, how long they live. There are a lot of unknowns, which is why we built the James Webb Space Telescope to help us answer this. Like I said, some of these options are more probable than others. The least interesting option is probably the most likely. That's just how it works.

Are we going to completely revamp Big Bang Cosmology, Concordance Cosmology, Lambda CDM? It's possible. I have to say it's possible, and we'll all say it together. It's possible. It's also not probable.

I'm not just staying awake at night worrying about it. Do we have to add some really super exotic ingredient? Do we have to get dark energy? Do we have to call up dark energy at 3 AM and say, hey. I need a favor.

I'm in a real jam. Could you help me out? Are we that desperate? I don't think so. Less likely.

Do we need to understand some complicated astrophysics? Almost certainly, Which is why we built the James Webb because we don't understand the complicated astrophysics of the early universe. That's why we're doing this. There's a lot to learn. Oh, and the observers might be stupid also on the side.

Like, maybe we don't understand the relationship between mass and brightness in the early universe. Maybe these are just a biased sample. Jade and his friends are a biased sample. And then as we make further observations, everything is gonna be peachy, and there's won't be an issue at all. It's probably a big mixture of all of the above when it comes to complicated astrophysics and more refined observations.

In general, the James Webb is finding a young universe that appears to be filled with galaxies that are massive, bright, rich in heavy elements, and have active star formation. This goes along with other clues we've had well before the development of James Webb that, the star and galaxy formation turned on real quick in the early universe, likely within the first 150000000 years, which is surprising and cool, and yes, interesting, but not in a sciency headline kind of way, but in a oh boy, we get to learn more about the universe kind of way. Because we know for sure that as we dig deeper, that the universe is going to teach us something we didn't know before. These galaxies don't have to break cosmology to be interesting. It's not a contradiction.

They can be interesting because we're curious and hungry and want to learn more about the universe we live in. James Webb is helping us tell the story of the young universe. We have a lot of options on the plate, a lot of possibilities to explain these results. It's worth it to keep investigating and pushing and studying, not because we think it will break the big bang paradigm, but because it's fun to learn new things. James Webb is doing what it was designed to do.

This is what scientific exploration looks like. Always restless. Never stopping. Always poking and prodding and testing. And I hope there are more surprises in store.

And I hope those surprises are interesting. Thank you to Scott m, Ted z, Bob c, Allen, and anonymous w for the questions that led to today's episode. Please keep those questions coming. Your questions are a delight. Every time I get one of your questions, it just makes my day.

And I add it to the list, and then we can keep doing this show. I can't thank you enough for all the wonderful questions. And I can't thank you enough for all the wonderful positive reviews on iTunes, on Spotify, on your favorite podcast, platform. Anywhere where you talk positively about the show, it it really helps. It really helps the show get more traction, more visibility.

And, yeah, I've been doing the show for years, and I hope to continue doing the show for years. And it's because of your questions, because of your support, and it's because of patreon.patreon.com/pm Sutter. I'd like to thank my top contributors this month. These are at the top of the list. Justin g, Chrisel, Alberto m, Duncan m, Corey d, Stargazer, Robert b, Tom g, Nyla, Sam r, John s, Joshua, Scott m, Rob h, Scott m, Louis m, John w, Alexis, Gilbert m, Rob w, Denise a, Jules, r, Mike, g, Jim l, Scott, j, David, s, Scott, r, Heather, Mike, s, Michelle, r, Pete, h, Steve, s, Watt, Watt, Berg, Lisa, r, and Koozie.

Thank you so much to all of you supporters. I really do appreciate it. Keep those questions coming. Askaspaceman@gmail.com or the website askaspaceman.com. And I will see you next time for more complete knowledge of time and space.

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