If the James Webb Telescope finds galaxies beyond 14 billion light-years, will the astrophysicist establishment modify their theories?

Question

It seems inevitable to me that the scope will indeed image them. If so, will the astonishingly inflexible astrophysicist establishment have the humility to admit they're wrong, and that the Big Bang theory is incorrect?

Or will there be a flurry of hand waving?

Thank you.

Why "inevitable", if they're not there? I don't understand. Could you please elaborate? — paul garrett, Jul 11 '22 at 23:08
But isn't that the very question: are there things that far away, or not? We'll get an answer one way or another, but I don't see the inevitability ahead-of-time of either yes or no, etc. Am I misunderstanding something? I'm not a professional astronomer, etc. — paul garrett, Jul 11 '22 at 23:12
@paulgarrett Then I'll speak plainly, Paul. It's inevitable because the very idea that the universe - and even space itself - had a beginning was always a fundamentally flawed hypothesis. — White Prime, Jul 11 '22 at 23:27
I voted to close this nonsense as you're basically just asking for opinions on a hypothetical scenario. — StephenG - Help Ukraine, Jul 12 '22 at 11:18

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 12 '22 at 12:06

1

I will answer your question: if the James Webb Telescope finds galaxies beyond 14 billion light-years, then cosmologists will certainly revise some key points in the chronology of the Big Bang.

You might want to remember a nice saying: "Cosmologists might be wrong but they're never in doubt". This means that cosmology is our best theoretical guess given by a plain extrapolation of current known law of Physics through the use of Mathematics and actual observational datas. Once the observational datas change, obviously also the extrapolation derived from those changes.

answered Jul 12 '22 at 12:06

Dac0

316
1
7

If you look at how distance is calculated from redshift it is obvious that James Webb will never find galaxies further away than 13.72 billion light years. Even if James Webb were to find an object with close to infinite redshift, the redshift to distance converter will place it aroud 13.72 billion light years away. Se for instance: https://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html – Agerhell Sep 27 '22 at 12:19

If the James Webb Telescope finds galaxies beyond 14 billion light-years, will the astrophysicist establishment modify their theories?

1 Answers1