Perhaps the solution to the problems the Webb is forcing us to confront will require only that cosmologists come up with a new “dark” something or other that will allow our picture of the universe to continue to match the best cosmological data.
There is, however, another possibility.
The year 2023 is still young; there’s plenty of time to petition the cosmic hackers for a better deal.
Just look out for the butterflies, and be careful what you wish for.
An earlier version of this article misidentified the computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
It is David Anderson, not David Peterson.
Not even the most advanced physics can reveal everything we want to know about the history and future of the cosmos, or about ourselves.
An infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope showing an area of the sky known as GOODS-South, which has more than 45,000 galaxies visible here, many less than 600 million years old.
