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Astronomers using theJames Webb Space Telescope(JWST ) have find that some of the universe ’s oldest galaxy aremuch brighter and with child than scientist thought . The finding could loan credibility to an alternative theory to dark matter .
The stock model of galaxy formation predicts that only subdued light should be seen from the crude galaxies that exact shape in the first billion year after theBig Bang . The outstandingly large and undimmed galaxies detected by JWST bolster predictions made by a rival possibility know as change Newtonian moral force ( MOND ) . The investigator publish their findings Nov. 12 inThe Astrophysical Journal .
A photograph of thousands of stars in a nebula
" What the theory of dark topic portend is not what we see , " study leading authorStacy McGaugh , an astrophysicist at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio , said in a statement . " The bottom line is , ' I told you so . ' I was elicit to think that pronounce that was rude , but that ’s the whole point of the scientific method acting : Make predictions and then hold in which come true . "
MOND proposes that for gravitative twist 10 trillion time smaller than those felt on Earth ’s surface , such as the tugboat feel between remote coltsfoot , Newton ’s laws break down and must be replaced by other equations . First pop the question by Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom in 1982 , the hypothesis first emerge as an attack to explain the dissipated - than - expected rotations seen around the outskirts of distant galaxies .
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MOND has had a identification number of successes , helping to unearthunexpected lawsdictating how galaxies move through space . Yet the theory remainswidely rejectedby astronomers , who lean to favor cold obscure topic theories , because it has yet to excuse a wide range of cosmogenic phenomena . On the other mitt , dark affair theories can explain a lot of observations , but they go wrong to do so for those accurately predicted by MOND .
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To search for clues that could break the dead end , the astronomers pore over information collected by JWST , capturing the dim signal of some of the early galaxy in the universe . According to their study , these ancient galaxies had grown importantly bigger and brighter than conventionaldark mattermodels prognosis , but they are precisely in line of work with the predictions made by MOND .
precisely what could be causing the divergence remains an exciting whodunit . It ’s possible that the additional luminousness stems from supermassive black holes that are growing significantly faster than expected , but that ideapresents problems of its own .
" We get hold ourselves caught between two very different theory that seem irreconcilable despite applying to closely related to yet incommensurate lines of evidence , " the stargazer write in the paper . " The simple strength law hypothesized by MOND has made enough successful a priori predictions that it can not be an chance event : it must be telling us something . What that is remains as mysterious as the composition of dark matter . "