James Webb Space Telescope

by Stephen Goodfellow

Scientifically, I am a layman. I love Science, nature and technology; I have avidly followed these topics daily over decades and have had the honor of corresponding and meeting really great scientists. I am addicted to perpetual awe.

Let me tell you a story. While researching for my weekly ScienceTechNature presentation back in 2018, I came across an astronomy article; the discovery of a galaxy (CR7), a mere seven hundred million years from a supposed Big Bang origin.

Well, I thought; That's surprising. I know seven hundred million years sounds like a long time, but consider that our Milky Way galaxy, consisting of an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars, rotates a mere three times in the time span of that galaxy's existence. Life on our planet has been around five times longer than it took this galaxy to form! Furthermore, the stars in this galaxy contained carbon; it takes billions of years to produce second generation stars capable of producing carbon.

You see the problem: How do you create a fully formed galaxy in that short a time?

Galaxies that shouldn't be there, found inside the "Dark Ages"
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Patiently, I waited for cosmologists to be as astounded as I was by this discovery. I waited. And waited. Nothing; no one seemed to see the disparity. I mentioned my observation on a reputable astronomy forum; the administrator kicked me off and erased my query.

So, years later, a couple of months before the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) became operational, a university radio show asked me what we should expect. Contrary to the vast majority of cosmologists who predicted galaxies would diminish in size as time moved closer to the "Dark Ages" just after the Big Bang, before cosmo-genesis formed any stars, I predicted the opposite: there would be galaxies as far as the JWST could see.

I am pleased to report that I was right; they were wrong.

It is a sad day when a layman pays attention to the data and can predict a correct outcome when the bulk of the cosmologist community got it wrong. I'll confess to some contempt.

It is apparent to me that our understanding of the Universe is going through an extraordinary revolution at the moment. Newly discovered, fully mature garden variety galaxies to be found smack dab in the middle of what was predicted to be a "Dark Ages," an early epoch supposed to consist of primordial particles that occurred right after a supposed "Big Bang."

And now? Almost every month, new confirmations come forth; at the time of this writing, astronomers have found galaxies appearing two hundred million years after a supposed Big Bang, which makes the timeline for galaxy creation impossible within the Big Bang framework.

Big Bang Cosmologists seeing the JWST images for the first time.
Digital rendering by the author
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Well, the "Dark Ages" as I was pleased to point out, does not appear to exist, and the much vaunted, and absurdly still presently accepted interpretation of cosmic redshift is now shot to smithereens, as it was the fundamental predictor of the now non-existent make-believe.

Even today, the bulk of the cosmologist community has not come to this realization, either ignoring or unaware of this devastating error. I guess these things take time.

Aside from the "Dark Ages" problem, cosmologists have heavily relied on the concept that the Universe is a homogeneous entity (think milk). This misconception was shattered by the extraordinarily large, recently discovered 'Giant Arcs' that exceed the 1.2 billion light year (post Big Bang) threshold, which challenges the cosmological principle that at large enough scales the universe should be considered to be the same in every place; too large to be in existence.

Well, now we know this isn't so, and the Universe is not homogeneous.

Adding to the misery, a recent astronomical paper points out that the leakage of distant galactic light mimics what we have hitherto thought of as the much-vaunted Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (distant light from a Big Bang). If this paper turns out to be correct, it kicks out another foundational leg from under the Big Bang.

Present cosmologists are having a hard time with all this, and who can blame them?

Since that pesky James Webb Space Telescope went into operation in 2022, instantly discovering a plethora of deep space galaxies, the majority of the cosmological community has found considerable difficulty coming to terms the new paradigm, most of them desperately trying to reimagine these newly discovered jigsaw puzzle pieces, desperately trying to shoe-horn them into an ever complex faltering Big Bang puzzle, a concept that is rapidly devolving from a what was an iron-clad theory into a highly questionable hypothesis.
And then there are all those decades-long production of books, journals and papers; entire cosmological careers made irrelevant, left in the dust. Well, it breaks your heart.

The Big Bang is a hard concept to let go of.

Pencil drawing by the author
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Back in the 1920's, Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest proposed the theory, suggesting that the Universe began from a single point and has been expanding ever since. Needless to say, his employer whole-heartedly approved of this "In the Beginning" approach to the Universe.

But if you ask Galileo, it's not the first time the Catholic Church rubber-stamped what turned out to be a mortally erroneous vision of the Universe. For many, a Big Bang is a comfortable pacifier; the womb-like need of belief that there is a beginning - especially if it can be backed up by science. Such a vision may give considerable religious solace on a very fundamental level.

However, heading back into the harsher light of observation, much wisdom can be attributed to Terence McKenna's rather caustic comment: "Give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest."

Once again, the specter of an infinite Universe raises its monstrous head in our minds; a concept that borders on madness.

So much more the comfort in the faith of a beginning and an end, such as can be found in a Big Bang?

So where do I think we stand? I'll say that present observational evidence does not support a Big Bang but who knows what future, further observations might bring us?

Let me conclude this article with a plug; there are so many controversial heretical bulwarks based on observational evidence that we discover in our Wednesday gatherings at 11:30am for SciTechNature at the Biblioteca. It might be amusing to pretend a shocked and indignant cosmology community fleeing our Wednesday group to eventually become useful citizens, abandoning cosmology to become cosmetologists, enthusiastically arranging hair styles for happy customers.

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Stephen Goodfellow was born in Southampton in England 1953. Goodfellow has lived in Nigeria, England, Denmark, Mexico. He enrolled at Wayne State University in Detroit, USA to pursue his Postgraduate degree and graduated M.A in painting, and M.F.A. in printmaking. He developed an art medium called Primary Micropointillism consisting of only three colors which he applies to canvas.

Stephen has lived in San Miguel as a full time fine artist for the past 14 years.

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