Posted on 06/13/2025 5:44:18 AM PDT by Red Badger
Six images of galaxies taken from nearly 800,000, from upper left to lower right: the present-day universe, and 3, 4, 8, 9, and 10 billion years ago. Credit: M. Franco / C. Casey / COSMOS-Web collaboration
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A new cosmic deep field map from the COSMOS collaboration, powered by the James Webb Space Telescope, is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about the early universe.
Spanning nearly the full history of cosmic time and featuring nearly 800,000 galaxies, the data shows a universe forming stars and supermassive black holes far earlier—and in greater numbers—than previously predicted. This unprecedented scope offers a mural-scale view of the universe’s youth and has left researchers wondering if their core cosmological models still hold.
COSMOS Collaboration Unveils Massive Map of the Universe
In an exciting leap for open science, an international team of researchers has just released the data behind the largest map of the universe ever made. The project, called COSMOS-Web, was created using observations from the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It includes breathtaking images and a detailed catalog of nearly 800,000 galaxies, stretching across nearly the entire history of the cosmos.
And this massive cosmic map is already challenging what scientists thought they knew about the early universe.
“Our goal was to construct this deep field of space on a physical scale that far exceeded anything that had been done before,” said UC Santa Barbara physics professor Caitlin Casey, who co-leads the COSMOS collaboration with Jeyhan Kartaltepe of the Rochester Institute of Technology. “If you had a printout of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field on a standard piece of paper,” she said, referring to the iconic view of nearly 10,000 galaxies released by NASA in 2004, “our image would be slightly larger than a 13-foot by 13-foot-wide mural, at the same depth. So it’s really strikingly large.”
Capturing 98% of Cosmic History
The new image stretches back about 13.5 billion years, nearly to the Big Bang. Since the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, this means the COSMOS-Web project captures roughly 98 percent of all cosmic history. But the goal wasn’t just to find the oldest galaxies. Scientists wanted to explore the larger environments where these galaxies were forming—places where the first stars, galaxies, and black holes were coming to life.
“The cosmos is organized in dense regions and voids,” Casey explained. “And we wanted to go beyond finding the most distant galaxies; we wanted to get that broader context of where they lived.”
A ‘Big Surprise’ in Deep Space
And what a cosmic neighborhood it turned out to be. Before JWST turned on, Casey said, she and fellow astronomers made their best predictions about how many more galaxies the space telescope would be able to see, given its 6.5 meter (21 foot) diameter light-collecting primary mirror, about six times larger than Hubble’s 2.4 meter (7 foot, 10 in) diameter mirror. The best measurements from Hubble suggested that galaxies within the first 500 million years would be incredibly rare, she said.
“It makes sense — the Big Bang happens, and things take time to gravitationally collapse and form, and for stars to turn on. There’s a timescale associated with that,” Casey explained. “And the big surprise is that with JWST, we see roughly 10 times more galaxies than expected at these incredible distances. We’re also seeing supermassive black holes that are not even visible with Hubble.” And they’re not just seeing more, they’re seeing different types of galaxies and black holes, she added.
“Since the telescope turned on we’ve been wondering ‘Are these JWST datasets breaking the cosmological model? Because the universe was producing too much light too early; it had only about 400 million years to form something like a billion solar masses of stars. We just do not know how to make that happen.”
‘Lots of Unanswered Questions’ Remain
While the COSMOS-Web images and catalog answer many questions astronomers have had about the early universe, they also spark more questions.
“Since the telescope turned on we’ve been wondering ‘Are these JWST datasets breaking the cosmological model? Because the universe was producing too much light too early; it had only about 400 million years to form something like a billion solar masses of stars. We just do not know how to make that happen,” Casey said. “So, lots of details to unpack, and lots of unanswered questions.”
Open Access for Global Discovery
In releasing the data to the public, the hope is that other astronomers from all over the world will use it to, among other things, further refine our understanding of how the early universe was populated and how everything evolved to the present day. The dataset may also provide clues to other outstanding mysteries of the cosmos, such as dark matter and physics of the early universe that may be different from what we know today.
“A big part of this project is the democratization of science and making tools and data from the best telescopes accessible to the broader community,” Casey said. The data was made public almost immediately after it was gathered, but only in its raw form, useful only to those with the specialized technical knowledge and the supercomputer access to process and interpret it. The COSMOS collaboration has worked tirelessly for the past two years to convert raw data into broadly usable images and catalogs. In creating these products and releasing them, the researchers hope that even undergraduate astronomers could dig into the material and learn something new.
“Because the best science is really done when everyone thinks about the same data set differently,” Casey said. “It’s not just for one group of people to figure out the mysteries.”
Mapping the Future of Discovery
For the COSMOS collaboration, the exploration continues. They’ve headed back to the deep field to further map and study it.
“We have more data collection coming up,” she said. “We think we have identified the earliest galaxies in the image, but we need to verify that.” To do so, they’ll be using spectroscopy, which breaks up light from galaxies into a prism, to confirm the distance of these sources (more distant = older). “As a byproduct,” Casey added, “we’ll get to understand the interstellar chemistry in these systems through tracing nitrogen, carbon and oxygen. There’s a lot left to learn and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.”
The COSMOS-Web image is available to browse interactively; the accompanying scientific papers have been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy & Astrophysics.
https://cosmos2025.iap.fr/fitsmap.html
It’s far younger.
Genesis ping.
God created.
Psalm 90:2
Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Not a Big Bang, but a Big Evaporation or a Big Sublimation.
But those don't roll off the tongue in the same way, do they.
I don’t like calling it a Big Bang, either.
There is no sound in Space, so it was silent............
The more we learn the more we realize we don’t know.
I think they’re called “miracles.”
Everything done by the CONSORTIUM. Shows how political views can infect thought processes before the data is digested.
Some have wondered why the beginning is not termed , “Bertha D. Universe” instead.
Maybe there’s a new old folks’ buffet near his mansion.
Must be. Last time I saw him he was getting really obese................
Oooo!
That’s Good.
Thank you. I knew it was going to be some work. Good to see it!
Genesis 1:3
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.
Yes, totally agree! Remember what Job 12:7 - 10 says as well as Rom. 1:18.
There is a lot of data that refutes the view of the naturalists but it never gets much press. It’s a world view issue. Two people can view the same facts and arrive at completely different conclusions. When the sky is pealed away and those who dwell on the earth see God seated on his throne about to delivery judgement it will be too late to exercise faith in His spoken and written Word - but... they will at least have the evidence that will finally convince them.
“Something is very wrong with cosmology.”
Agreed—Physics is turning into a mess as well. The large scale equations and the small scale equations don’t match. Relativity and quantum mechanics don’t play well together.
The old saying may be correct—the more we know the more we learn we don’t know.
Why do we keep questioning “settled science”?
STELTER: Don’t do your own research
Yes, the ultimate definition of tragedy - the Truth acknowledged too late to be of benefit.
We keep learning how wrong these “experts” are. Perhaps their entire belief system is bogus. Maybe the Universe is quadrillions of years old and trillions of light years across. Maybe there was no Big Bang. And maybe life creates matter and energy. The double slit experiment is a clue.
Calm down - these guys know everything, just like they claimed back in the 1950s.
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