When Nasa launched the James Webb Space telescope on Christmas Day last year its goal was to shed light on the wonders of the universe. It’s delivering on that promise: since the summer we’ve had a steady stream of stunning images of dying stars, distant planets and colliding galaxies.
Researchers expected the telescope’s data would support the Big Bang theory. But it has captured images so far back in time, revealing the existence of galaxies so old, that the very origins of the universe have instead been called into question.
‘I find myself lying awake at three in the morning wondering if everything I’ve ever done is wrong,’ said Allison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas, after seeing the first images from the James Webb telescope. She isn’t alone. Similar sentiments have been picked up by folk with an axe to grind about the Big Bang theory. In particular, the ‘independent scientist’ Eric Lerner, who has long advocated for an alternative model of cosmology, in August wrote an article titled ‘The Big Bang didn’t happen’. His piece went viral.
‘I find myself lying awake at three in the morning wondering if everything I’ve ever done is wrong’
Among other things, Lerner claims that the galaxies captured by the James Webb tele-scope are too old and too numerous to be compatible with the Big Bang hypothesis on the grounds that it is impossible for galaxies as large as the Milky Way to form in just a few hundred million years. The evidence, he says, points to a non-expanding universe, not an expanding one.
That would mean big trouble for the Big Bang theory if it were true, but the truth is more interesting than the hype. The Big Bang (which took place almost 13.8 billion years ago) has not been disproven by the James Webb telescope.
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