Analysis of JWST Data Finds - Old Galaxies in a Young Universe?
2 31Two astrophysicists at Spain's Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias analyzed data from the James Webb Space Telescope — the most powerful telescope available — on 31 galaxies with an average redshift of 7.3 (when the universe was 700 million years old, according to the standard model). "We found that they are on average ~600 million years old old, according to the comparison with theoretical models based on previous knowledge of nearby galaxies..."
"If this result is correct, we would have to think about how it is possible that these massive and luminous galaxies were formed and started to produce stars in a short time. It is a challenge."
But "The fact that some of these galaxies might be older than the universe, within some significant confidence level, is even more challenging." The most extreme case is for the galaxy JADES-1050323 with redshift 6.9, which has, according to my calculation, an age incompatible to be younger than the age of the universe (800 million years) within 4.7-sigma (that is, a probability that this happens by chance as statistical fluctuation of one in one million).
If this result is confirmed, it would invalidate the standard Lambda-CDM cosmological model. Certainly, such an extraordinary change of paradigm would require further corroboration and other stronger evidence. Anyway, it would be interesting for other researchers to try to explain the Spectral Energy Distribution of JADES-1050323 in standard terms, if they can ... and without introducing unrealistic/impossible models of extinction, as is usually done.
The findings are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
2 comments
Please, no (Score: 5, Insightful)
by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @11:49AM (#65990452)
it would invalidate the standard Lambda-CDM cosmological model.
Oh please don't do that. It might force the revisiting of dark matter, dark energy and all the other cruft tacked on to save current theories.
And we're already pretty busy defending phlogiston.
</sarcasm>
Re:Please, no (Score: 5, Interesting)
by parityshrimp ( 6342140 ) on Sunday February 15, 2026 @12:46PM (#65990540)
The vast majority of astrophysicists think dark matter exists because of multiple lines of observational evidence, some of which are listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evidence [wikipedia.org]
Sure, it's weird, but nature doesn't owe us anything.
The article here is using redshift to infer the age of the universe when light from these galaxies was emitted and complex models involving star formation, stellar composition, etc. to estimate the age of the galaxies themselves. It's more likely something is off with the galaxy age estimate or our understanding of how early galaxies formed than Lambda-CDM as a whole being wrong. These are recent observations only enabled by the Webb telescope. They'll figure it out.