In a groundbreaking discovery, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has presented data that directly challenges our current understanding of the universe. For years, cosmologists have pegged the universe’s age at approximately 13.8 billion years. Yet, the new JWST findings suggest that this may be a vast underestimation. But how has one telescope managed to disrupt such a long-held belief?

The universe’s secrets are vast, but none has been as puzzling as the presence of ‘impossible early galaxies’—so named due to their peculiar formation periods.

According to existing models, these galaxies, emerging during the cosmic dawn, roughly 500 to 800 million years post-big bang, shouldn’t have evolved disks and bulges so quickly. “It’s akin to seeing a toddler with the wisdom of an octogenarian,” says a scientist, explaining the paradox.

Dark matter, a mysterious substance thought to make up most of the universe’s mass, has puzzled scientists for nearly a century. First proposed by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort in 1932 to explain the “missing mass” needed for galaxies to stay together, it remains undetected despite decades of research. However, a recent study by Dr. Richard Lieu at The…

The tiny red dot is us.

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope to confirm that supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel they need to form new stars. The results are reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The international team, co-led by the University of Cambridge, used Webb to observe a galaxy roughly the size of the Milky Way in the early universe, about two billion years after the Big Bang. Like most large galaxies, it has a supermassive black hole at its center. However, this galaxy is essentially ‘dead’: it has mostly stopped forming new stars.

“Based on earlier observations, we knew this galaxy was in a quenched state: it’s not forming many stars given its size, and we expect there is a link between the black hole and the end of star formation,” said co-lead author Dr. Francesco D’Eugenio from Cambridge’s Kavli Institute for Cosmology.

Here’s what to look for.

In 4 billion years, when the Milky Way galaxy collides with the Andromeda Galaxy, the distance between the stars will be so vast that none of the 1.3 trillion stars are expected to collide.

In roughly 4 billion years, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way will collide, creating a new supergalaxy. This galactic merger will not result in stars colliding due to the vast distances between them, but the supermassive black holes at the centres of both galaxies will eventually merge. While the solar system might get flung farther from the galactic core, there’s also a chance it could be ejected entirely. Even though life on Earth would have ended by then due to the Sun’s increasing heat, this cosmic event would offer a stunning view of the changing night sky.

After reading the article, Reddit user Harry, with over +6.5k upvotes, commented: “It’s not direct collisions that are the issue. It’s the disruption to the normal gravitational systems and orbital paths. A planet that was in the goldilocks zone for liquid water and life could get affected by another passing star system enough to move it sufficiently out of its normal orbit to have planet changing effects.”