pablowallaby t1_j79pu8t wrote on February 5, 2023 at 3:52 AM

Reply to comment by 7sv3n7 in Serious question by Unable_Region7300

The JWST results so far have not contradicted the Big Bang Theory. That article is contributing to misinformation and fear mongering, tbh. As Dr. Becky’s video (that u/wanderlustcub shared) explains, cosmologists are actually excited to see if JWST proposals will help constrain the “crisis in cosmology” which is basically the Hubble constant, or rate of expansion of the universe.

bigjeff5 t1_j79s84k wrote on February 5, 2023 at 4:14 AM

Exactly this.

My understanding was always that the Big Bang itself was the problem. That the specific features observed during the Big Bang don't match up with what they should be given what we know about physics. It's just a "we look in our telescopes and see this happen, we don't really know why".

So any new irregularities that JWST can find would likely be super helpful in figuring out why the Big Bang behaved the way it did, and could potentially lead to new physics as a result.

pablowallaby t1_j79vr4z wrote on February 5, 2023 at 4:49 AM

Right! It’s actually not that the Big Bang theory is the problem itself - it’s the best framework we have so far that makes sense of all the observations (e.g. the expanding universe, the cosmic microwave background radiation, etc). The features that you’re referring to are dark energy and dark matter. We still don’t understand what those really are, and if we want to understand our entire universe and its expansion we need to get a handle on those two. And that’s where JWST will hopefully come in. I’m excited to see what we find out!