Exactly how old is the universe? A new theory says it was about twice as long as previously thought.

Observations of the early Universe with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cannot be explained with current cosmological models.

These models estimate the age of the universe at 13.8 billion years and are based on the concept of the universe expanding after the Big Bang.

My research proposes a model that puts the age of the universe at 26.7 billion years, which corresponds to an “impossible primitive galaxy” JWST. Remarks.

The first impossible galaxies refer to the fact that some galaxies from the cosmic dawn – 500 to 800 million years after the Big Bang – have discs and bulges resembling those that have undergone a long period of evolution. And smaller galaxies appear to be more massive than larger ones, which is exactly the opposite of what is expected.

Frequency and distance

The age estimate was derived from the universe’s expansion rate by measuring the redshift of spectral lines in the light of distant galaxies.

The previous explanation of redshift was based on the assumption that light loses energy on its way over cosmic distances. This “tired light” explanation was rejected as it failed to explain many sightings.

The redshift of light is similar to the Doppler shift of sound: sounds appear to have a higher frequency (pitch) as they approach and lower as they recede.

Redshift, a lower frequency of light, indicates when an object is moving away from us; The greater the distance from the galaxy, the greater the recession rate and redshift.

Another explanation for redshift is the Doppler effect: distant galaxies are receding from us at a rate proportional to their distance, indicating that the universe is expanding.

The expanding universe model was favored by most astronomers after two Bell Labs astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, accidentally discovered the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in 1964, which the steady-state model failed to explain satisfactorily.

The rate of expansion essentially determines the age of the universe. Until the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s, the age of the universe was estimated to be between seven and 20 billion years due to uncertainty about the rate of expansion. Further observations led to the now accepted value of 13.8 billion years, which puts the Big Bang model on the pedestal of cosmology.

A NASA animation showing how light from distant galaxies is stretched by the expansion of the universe

Limitations of previous models

A study published last year proposed solving the impossible problem of early galaxies with a tired light model.

However, light fatigue cannot satisfactorily explain other cosmological observations, such as supernova redshifts and the uniformity of the cosmic microwave background.

I tried combining the standard big bang model with the tired light model to see how it fits the supernova data and the JWST data, but it didn’t fit the latter.

However, it extended the age of the universe to 19.3 billion years.I then attempted to construct a hybrid depleted light model and a cosmological model that I developed from the evolutionary coupling constants proposed by British physicist Paul Dirac in 1937.

This agreed well with both dates, but almost doubled the size of the universe way.

The new model extends the formation time of galaxies by a factor of 10 to 20 compared to the standard model, giving sufficient time for the formation of well-developed “impossible” objects. The first galaxies were observed.

Like any model, it should provide a satisfactory explanation of all observations that the Standard Cosmological Model satisfies.

Mixing models

The approach of mixing two models to explain new observations is not new. Isaac Newton considered that light propagates as particles in his theory of light, which prevailed until it was replaced by the wave theory of light in the 19th century to explain diffraction patterns observed with monochromatic light.

Albert Einstein resurrected the particle-like nature of light to explain the photoelectric effect—that light has dual characteristics: particle-like in some observations and wave-like in others. It has since become well-established that all particles have such dual characteristics.

Another way of measuring the age of the universe is to estimate the age of stars in globular clusters in our own galaxy-the Milky Way. Globular clusters include up to a million stars, all of which appear to have formed at the same time in the early universe.

Assuming all galaxies and clusters started to form simultaneously, the age of the oldest star in the cluster should provide the age of the universe (less the time when the galaxies began to form). For some stars such as Methuselah, believed to be oldest in the galaxy, astrophysical modeling yields an age greater than the age of the universe determined using the standard model, which is impossible.

Einstein believed that the universe is the same observed from any point at any time—homogeneous, isotropic and timeless. To explain the observed redshift of distant galaxies in such a steady-state universe, which appeared to increase in proportion to their distance (Hubble’s law), Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky, proposed the tired light theory in 1929.

New information

While some Hubble Space Telescope observations did point towards the impossible early galaxy problem, it was not until the launch of JWST in December 2021, and the data it provided since mid-2022, that this problem was firmly established.

To defend the standard big-bang model, astronomers have tried to resolve the problem by compressing the timeline for forming massive stars and primordial black holes accreting mass at unphysically high rates.

However, a consensus is developing towards new physics to explain these JWST observations.

Provided by The Conversation