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James Webb and Cosmology

12 September 2023
Astronomy, cosmology

At https://www.quantamagazine.org/standard-model-of-cosmology-survives-jwsts-surprising-finds-20230120/ … and https://dnyuz.com/2023/09/02/the-story-of-our-universe-may-be-starting-to-unravel/ … which has the title – the story of our universe may be starting to unravel. It’s all down to the new James Webb space telescope. It can look deeper into the atmosphere. It has also been pro-active now far around 8 months, beaming back images of planets and nebulae etc. It seems astronomers are thinking in terms of revising key features of cosmology – the origin and development of the universe.

James Webb is a joint project between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency. Its mission is to look back in time – at the early universe. It has discovered the existence of fully formed galaxies far earlier than mainstream theory would have them. According to the standard model, after Big Bang, there was a fixed and precise sequence of events. So much for consensus theories. Werbb to date has displayed images of very large galaxies, fully formed, at the cusp of the creation of the universe. Or, more succinctly, when the creation of the universe is thought to have begun. Until now. Is Big Bang still relevant?

There is also a problem with the Hubble Constant. How fast is the universe expanding? A variation of the article was published elsewhere – and reported on In the News.

The website has another interesting link at https://quantamagazine.org/magnetism-may-have-given-life-its-molecular-asymmetry-20230906/ …. which is all about how electro-magnetism may play a role in the origin of life. It begins with the research of the French scientists, Louis Pasteur, in mid 19th century. The subject, crystals and crystalisation. It then moves on to the  asymmetric nature of life on earth – be it crystals or anything else. A Harvard University group of scientists have published a series of papers that present a solution. They suggest that magnetic surfaces on minerals in bodies of water on primordial earth, changed by the planets magnetic field, could have served as chiral agents that attracted some forms of molecules before others, kicking off the chirality process. The theory is pleasing in some ways as it ties geophysics with geochemistry, prebiotic  chemistry, and bochemistry.

 

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