It is one of the greatest human creations and the most advanced technological equipment we have ever launched into space, which is why the hopes for the James Webb are so high. At the moment he is fulfilling his mission.
We have talked a lot about James Webb, and much more remains to be said about him. Since production began two decades ago, and after 14 years of continual delays, the James Webb has been on a mission to give us the best pictures of the universe ever taken.
And with these photographs, astronomers and scientists in general (mainly physicists) want to get a more precise idea of what the universe is like, how it was formed and, incidentally, clear up some doubts about somewhat complex issues (such as black holes).
But how did the universe form? The prevailing theory is that it all started with the Big Bang. In a nutshell, the theory suggests that everything, everywhere suddenly burst to life. Scientists have more or less agreed on this for years.
The Big Bang theory is currently the best model we have for the birth of our universe. Astrophysicists have shown that the theory explains, quite comprehensively, phenomena that we have observed in space for decades, such as persistent background radiation and elemental abundances.
It’s a robust framework that gives us a pretty good idea of how the cosmos came to be about 13.8 billion years ago. By the way, this is how the universes could end, their possible endings.
However, with the avalanche of preprint and popular science articles about the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, old erroneous claims that the Big Bang never happened have been circulating on social media and in the press in recent weeks.
And this is not true. The James Webb has provided no evidence to refute the Big Bang theory and cosmologists are not panicking. Why, then, are we seeing viral social media posts and curious headlines suggesting the Big Bang didn’t happen at all?
It all started with an article in the Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI), a British philosophical organization, on August 11. The article was written by Eric Lerner, who has been arguing against the Big Bang theory for a long time.
This article with a provocative headline at the IAI is also related to an upcoming discussion Lerner is taking part in, led by the IAI, called “Cosmology and the Big Bang”.
Lerner’s article gained traction on social media, being widely shared on Twitter and Facebook over the past week. It stands to reason that it caught fire: it’s a controversial idea that calls into question what we think we know about the cosmos.
Plus, it’s linked to new technology at James Webb, a telescope that sees parts of the universe we’ve never been able to see before. Including the Webb as a news hook suggests that there is new data that overturns a long-standing theory.
And while there is intriguing new data emerging from the JWST, none of it is the kind that could undo the Big Bang theory. Most of this new data reaches the public in the form of scientific preprints, articles that have not yet been peer-reviewed and lack scientific validity.
The scientific community fully rejects these theories, while waiting for the James Webb to shed new light on our universe. Tomorrow’s theories depend on what we discover today.
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