THE SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: Has Webb broken cosmology? JWST is challenging our theories of the Universe and finding things that shouldn’t exist.

JWST’s intriguing deep-field observations of faint light from the early, distant Universe reveal stars and galaxies that seem to be much larger than expected.

The CEERS (Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science) survey, led by Prof Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin, used JWST’s NIRCam instrument to look back as far as the epoch of reionisation, just after the so-called dark ages of cosmic evolution, to study the structure of galaxies in the very early Universe.

It found more of them than predicted, and they appear bigger and brighter than expected.

According to our best models of how the infant Universe developed, they aren’t supposed to be there so early or look as they do.

Some of the first survey results have even indicated there are mature-looking disc galaxies reminiscent of our own Milky Way present as early as 10 billion years ago.

We were expecting a more chaotic picture, with predominantly irregular galactic structures interacting violently.

It’s time to update those models.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Fred Hoyle, call your office?