James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Harvard ADS: Strong Observational Support for the R_h=ct Timeline in the Early Universe

Paper abstract: JWST's recent discovery of well-formed galaxies and supermassive black holes only a few hundred Myr after the big bang seriously challenges the timeline predicted by \LambdaCDM. Now, the latest identification of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) at z=6.71, together with these earlier inconsistencies, makes the time compression problem in this model quite overwhelming. We consider the timeline associated with the formation and growth of PAH grains based on current astrophysical models and argue that their appearance at z=6.71 favors the structure formation history in R_{\rm h}=ct rather than that of Planck-\LambdaCDM. We estimate the time at which they must have started growing in each case, and then trace their history through various critical events, such as the end of the `dark ages,' the beginning of Pop III star formation, and the onset of reionization. Together, these three distinct discoveries by JWST, viz. high-z galaxies, high-z quasars and the surprisingly early appearance of PAHs, all paint a fully consistent picture in which the timeline in \LambdaCDM is overly compressed at z\gtrsim 6, while strongly supporting the expansion history in the early Universe predicted by R_{\rm h}=ct.