JWST's First Glimpses of Early Galaxies Could Break Cosmology

Trouble viewing? View in your browser. View all Scientific American publications.

    

September 15, 2022

Dear Reader,   This week, we’re thinking about breaking the universe—or, at least, cosmologists’ best understandings of it. Our lead story discusses the James Webb Space Telescope’s exciting observations of far-distant galaxies in the early cosmos, which are shocking experts. Simply put, the galaxies Webb is finding scarcely a few hundred million years after the Big Bang seem to be too big and bright to be easily explained by standard consensus models. But huge uncertainties remain—further study could show these anomalous galaxies to be merely rather than revolutionary discoveries. Elsewhere, we have articles on the devastating ecological impacts of light pollution, another high-precision validation of Einstein’s general relativity, the courageous legacy of SETI pioneer Frank Drake, and more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Cosmology JWST's First Glimpses of Early Galaxies Could Break Cosmology The James Webb Space Telescope’s first images of the distant universe shocked astronomers. Is the discovery of unimaginably distant galaxies a mirage, or a revolution? By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Astrophysics Einstein's Greatest Theory Just Passed Its Most Rigorous Test Yet The MICROSCOPE mission tested the weak equivalence principle with free-falling objects in a satellite By Robert Lea,SPACE.com

Extraterrestrial Life Frank Drake's Courageous Questions Live On Drake’s curiosity and ambition turned the search for extraterrestrial intelligence into the scientific venture it is today By Yuri Milner

Pollution It's Time to Fight Light Pollution Learn about Viking women, doughnuts in the brain, nuclear weapons, and more in the October issue of Scientific American By Laura Helmuth

Pollution The Sky Needs Its 'Silent Spring' Moment A surge of new research underscores the growing global problem of light pollution—as well as the urgent need for public awareness and action By Joshua Sokol

Particle Physics Physicists Struggle to Unite around Future Plans Over 10 days, researchers participating in the once-a-decade “Snowmass process” attempted to build a unified scientific vision for the future of particle physics By Daniel Garisto

Astronomy Listen to Images from the James Webb Space Telescope It turns out that making new views of the Universe accessible to those with vision impairment has required some deep thought–and carefully chosen words. By Camilo Garzón | 07:39

Particle Physics See the Facility That Tests whether Nuclear Weapons Work Gargantuan lasers induce a fusion reaction to test the U.S. nuclear stockpile By Adam Mann,Alastair Philip Wiper

Neurology How Squishy Math Is Revealing Doughnuts in the Brain Topology, sometimes called rubber sheet geometry, is finding patterns in the brain, drugs and evolution By Kelsey Houston-Edwards

QUOTE OF THE DAY "The crazy thing about this problem is it's so damn fixable." Jesse Barber, ecologist at Boise State University

FROM THE ARCHIVE New Map Shows the Dark Side of Artificial Light at Night More than a third of humanity cannot see the Milky Way due to light pollution, and a new wave of energy-efficient lighting could make the problem much worse By Lee Billings | June 2016

LATEST ISSUES

Questions?   Comments?

Download the Scientific American App

To view this email as a web page, go here. You received this email because you opted-in to receive email from Scientific American. To ensure delivery please add news@email.scientificamerican.com to your address book. Unsubscribe     Manage Email Preferences     Privacy Policy     Contact Us