Is the Universe twice as old as we think?! #shorts #jwst

TWICE！

A new research study has been published claiming that the Universe is 26.7 billion years old, and not the typically accepted value of 13.8 billion years old. This all stems from the distant galaxies JWST has found that seem to have formed too many stars in too short of time in the early Universe, for our best model of the Universe to explain. If you assume that the redshift of light is not just due to the expansion of the Universe, but a combo of that and light losing energy as it impacts with other particles, then you end up with an older Universe, meaning there’s enough time to make the stars in the galaxies that JWST has spotted. But there’s a lot of caveats and assumptions that go into this, and this research paper conveniently ignores other data that supports the age of the universe being around 14 billion years old. I’ll be diving into this more in a long video on my YouTube channel next week so make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss out!

👩🏽‍💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online – you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.