Not sure if this is news or not, and it maybe out of date.

I saw a recent news article about the James Web telescope capturing images of distance galaxies that were thought to be small primordial ones. But the images are showing the galaxies to be far larger than expected which would indicate that they are much older than first assumed. Based on this it would indicate that the universe is much older than currently described. 

However, the scale of the galaxies in the images could be misleading due to gravitational lensing, thus giving the appearance that they are much larger than they actually are. Not 100% sure how this is determined but it is suggested that the lensing could be caused by super massive black holes. 

Any thoughts? 

Articles on space.com:

December 09, 2022

November 17, 2022

1 hour ago, Intoscience said:

Not sure if this is news or not, and it maybe out of date.

I saw a recent news article about the James Web telescope capturing images of distance galaxies that were thought to be small primordial ones. But the images are showing the galaxies to be far larger than expected which would indicate that they are much older than first assumed. Based on this it would indicate that the universe is much older than currently described. 

However, the scale of the galaxies in the images could be misleading due to gravitational lensing, thus giving the appearance that they are much larger than they actually are. Not 100% sure how this is determined but it is suggested that the lensing could be caused by super massive black holes. 

Any thoughts? 

Funny you mention it, was reading about the JWT on MIT Technology review the other week.

Article here:  https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/21/1065178/james-webb-space-telescope-universe/

I guess, for this effect the lensing needs to be caused by a massive compact object, ergo, supermassive black hole.

1 hour ago, Genady said:

I guess, for this effect the lensing needs to be caused by a massive compact object, ergo, supermassive black hole.

Or a galaxy cluster. VERY long distances.

8 minutes ago, Lorentz Jr said:

Or a galaxy cluster. VERY long distances.

Yes. But perhaps it needs to be also invisible.

26 minutes ago, Genady said:

Yes. But perhaps it needs to be also invisible.

That would be very massive!

Also, I would like to see a link about the lensing. Usually the images are distorted.

Edited February 28, 20232 yr by Lorentz Jr