The current consensus is that the universe has undergone continuous expansion since a big bang 13.7 billion years ago. But a rather groundbreaking new study suggests our Universe could be twice as old, challenging the prevailing cosmological model while reconciling the puzzling “impossible early galaxies problem.”
Header image: the latest map of a dynamic Universe taken by the eROSITA space telescope. (Jeremy Sander/ Hermann Brunner & the eSASS team/ Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics/ Eugene Churazov & Marat Gilfanov/ IKI)
For years, scientists have puzzled over the existence of ancient stars that appear to have formed before the calculated age of our universe. In addition, the recent discovery of early galaxies in an advanced stage of evolution by the James Webb Space Telescope has posed an intriguing mystery.
Forming barely 300 million years after the Big Bang, these galaxies exhibit levels of maturity and mass typically associated with billions of years of cosmic evolution. Curiously, they are also surprisingly small, adding another layer of mystery to the equation.
In the depths of the universe, the James Webb Space Telescope discovers galaxies that were “excessively massive” for their time
For Rajendra Gupta, assistant professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada, these puzzling observations can be explained by the fact that our universe is actually much older than previously thought.
Gupta’s study presents a new model that extends the formation time of galaxies by billions of years, explaining the apparent discrepancy between the observed ages of some stars and the estimated ages of the Universe.
The main stages in the evolution of the universe. (NAOJ)
This model takes into account Fritz Zwicky’s fatigued light theory, which suggests that the redshift observed in the light of distant galaxies is the result of a gradual loss of energy over large cosmic distances. According to Zwicky, light becomes “tired” simply by traveling large distances in the cosmos. This is in stark contrast to the currently established theory that the redshift observed in distant celestial objects such as galaxies is mainly due to their distance from us, a consequence of the expansion of the Universe in all directions.
However, the Swiss astronomer’s tired light theory has been the subject of considerable controversy within the scientific community. One of the main problems was that the depleted light not only caused a redshift, but also a significant drop in the intensity, or brightness, of the light. Critics have argued that the observed brightness of distant objects would be much dimmer than that observed in reality as light loses energy across cosmic distances.
The position and color of 200,000 galaxies, from here to the edge of the observable universe, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) program
Although Zwicky’s theory initially contradicts observations, Gupta offers a new perspective. By coexisting the tired light theory with the expanding universe, the redshift phenomenon can be reinterpreted as a hybrid phenomenon combining both expansion and energy loss, says Gupta. This new interpretation offers a plausible explanation for the observations of the first galaxies.
In addition to the theory of fatigued light, Gupta introduces the concept of evolutionary “coupling constants” proposed by physicist Paul Dirac. Coupling constants are fundamental physical constants that control the interactions between particles, and Dirac suggested they could change over time.
By accounting for the evolution of these constants, Gupta’s model lengthens the formation period of the first galaxies observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. Instead of a few hundred million years, this revised framework predicts several billion years of cosmic evolution and offers a more satisfactory explanation for the advanced evolution and mass of these ancient galaxies.
Gupta’s model also challenges the traditional interpretation of the “cosmological constant,” which represents the dark energy behind the accelerated expansion of the universe. Instead, a modified constant is proposed that takes into account the evolution of the coupling constants.
This adaptation of the cosmological model could help solve the mystery of the small size of galaxies observed in the early Universe, allowing for more accurate observations and a better understanding of cosmic evolution.
Although Gupta’s model deviates radically from the prevailing cosmological framework, it presents compelling arguments that warrant closer examination.
By combining the expanding universe theory with Zwicky’s fatigued light hypothesis and incorporating evolutionary coupling constants, Gupta offers a fascinating solution to the mysteries of early galaxies and the age of our universe.
The study was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: JWST observations of the early universe and ΛCDM cosmology and featured on the University of Ottawa website: Reinventing cosmology: uOttawa research puts the age of the universe at 26.7 – not 13.7 billion years.