A Radical Solution to the JWST Early Galaxy Crisis
The James Webb Space Telescope has thrown cosmology into delightful chaos. We’re finding fully formed galaxies at redshift z = 25, when the universe was only 100 million years old – a cosmic eyeblink after the Big Bang. These discoveries are forcing physicists to confront an uncomfortable truth: our models of early universe structure formation may be fundamentally flawed.
But what if the problem isn’t with our models, but with our assumptions? What if the universe didn’t start from a perfectly smooth, near-zero-sized singularity, but from something far more complex?
The Crisis of Early Maturity
Current observations reveal a universe that grew up impossibly fast. JWST is finding too many too massive galaxies too early in the universe, with some candidates appearing as organized structures when the universe was barely 100 million years old. The problem is temporal: there simply hasn’t been enough time for gravity to assemble such massive, complex structures from the tiny quantum fluctuations that seeded our universe.
There is a much larger distance for material to travel than the current circumference of the solar circle, and not much time in which to do it. If we want to get it done by z = 10, there is less than 500 Myr available – about two orbits of the sun. We just can’t get there fast enough.
The standard model of cosmology assumes structure formation begins essentially from scratch after the Big Bang, with gravity slowly building complexity over billions of years. But JWST is showing us a universe that hit the ground running.
Enter the Artefactons Hypothesis
Consider an alternative: our Big Bang was not the beginning of everything, but a collision between higher-dimensional brane structures – universes that had already existed for trillions of years before merger.
In this “brane collision cosmology,” the colliding branes weren’t empty voids but mature universes containing:
- Evolved galactic structures
- Supermassive black holes grown over geological timescales
- Complex matter distributions shaped by eons of evolution
When these ancient branes collided, the enormous energy release created our familiar Big Bang signature – the cosmic microwave background, the light elements, the expansion we observe. But critically, not everything was destroyed. Some structures survived as “artefactons” – fossil remnants of pre-collision cosmic architecture.
The Physics of Cosmic Archaeology
These artefactons wouldn’t be intact galaxies, but rather the gravitational and structural “DNA” of ancient cosmic formations:
Supermassive Black Hole Seeds: In universes with trillions of years to evolve, supermassive black holes could grow to 10^11-10^13 solar masses. Post-collision, these become the mysteriously massive “seed” black holes that explain how we observe mature quasars at z > 10.
Gravitational Scaffolding: Dense matter concentrations from pre-collision structures would provide ready-made gravitational wells, dramatically accelerating post-collision galaxy formation.
Spatial Distribution: These artefactons would be spaced at supercluster scales – roughly 1-3 gigaparsecs apart – meaning our observable universe contains perhaps 20-100 major fossil regions, each spawning clusters of early galaxies.
Testable Predictions
Unlike many speculative cosmological models, the artefactons hypothesis generates specific, falsifiable predictions:
Galaxy Clustering Patterns: Early galaxies should show non-random clustering around artefacton sites, creating a “beads on a string” distribution pattern distinct from standard structure formation models.
Black Hole Mass Functions: We should observe a bimodal distribution of early supermassive black holes – small ones formed post-collision, and anomalously massive ones that are artefacton remnants.
CMB Anomalies: The cosmic microwave background should contain subtle signatures of pre-collision structure, appearing as non-Gaussian fluctuations or unexpected correlations at large scales.
Reionization Timing: With such a high rate of star formation, more than half of the photons produced in these high redshift galaxies can eventually escape. This means that the galaxies in today’s paper could have contributed to the cosmic reionization process. Artefacton-seeded galaxies would accelerate reionization, explaining why this process appears to occur faster than models predict.
The Sabine Hossenfelder Test
Before proceeding further, we must subject this hypothesis to what we might call “The Sabine Hossenfelder Test” – the withering scrutiny of a physicist who has built her reputation on demolishing beautiful but untestable theories.
“ZIS IS NOW HOW ZCIENCE WORKS!” one can almost hear her saying. “Vhere is Ze Methzematics? Show me ze Numberz! Until you calczulate ze collisionary dzynamicz and make quantititzative, zis is just storytelling with too many shrooms!!”
Sorry … but I em trembling. That woman scares me. In an unhealthily erotic way.
And she would be absolutely right. The artefactons hypothesis, however elegant conceptually, must survive rigorous mathematical treatment:
Required Calculations:
- Detailed brane collision dynamics using M-theory frameworks
- Quantitative survival probabilities for pre-collision structures
- Specific predictions for artefacton mass distributions and spatial correlations
- Expected signatures in gravitational wave backgrounds from ancient mergers
The Falsification Criteria: Unlike theories that hide behind unfalsifiable complexity, this model lives or dies by observable predictions. If JWST finds no clustering correlations, no bimodal black hole distributions, or no CMB anomalies at the predicted scales, the hypothesis fails the Hossenfelder Test spectacularly.
But here’s the crucial point: this isn’t pseudoscience masquerading as cosmology. It’s the kind of creative model-building that, properly developed, could lead to genuine breakthroughs. Hossenfelder herself might grudgingly admit: “Look, ze expzpected Signaturez, make ze predictions, then we may test zem….”
She never does though. Maybe this time this will be the exception.
The Deep Time Perspective
Perhaps most provocatively, this model suggests our universe is not 13.8 billion years old, but rather the latest chapter in a story spanning trillions or even quadrillions of years. We may be living in cosmic sediment – the reformed debris of unimaginably ancient civilizations.
This reframes the early galaxy “crisis” not as a failure of our physics, but as archaeological evidence. Those z = 25 galaxies aren’t impossibly precocious babies, but the reformed descendants of cosmic elders.
Implications and Next Steps
The artefactons hypothesis doesn’t require exotic new physics – brane cosmology is already part of established string theory frameworks. What it demands is mathematical rigor: detailed calculations of collision dynamics, quantitative predictions for observable signatures, and careful comparison with accumulating JWST data.
If correct, this model resolves multiple cosmological tensions simultaneously: early galaxy formation, supermassive black hole timing, and reionization rates. It suggests our universe is simultaneously younger and far older than we imagined – a 13.8-billion-year-old structure built from trillion-year-old components.
As JWST continues pushing into the cosmic dawn, we may discover that our universe’s “beginning” was actually a renovation project, not new construction. In the deepest cosmic time, we are all archaeologists, excavating the fossilized remains of universes that died so ours could be born.
The question is not whether our universe had a beginning, but whether that beginning was truly the beginning of everything – or simply the most recent chapter in an infinitely deeper story written in the language of gravity, time, and collapsed starlight.
And if Dr. Hossenfelder is reading this: yes, we know we need more mathematics. Consider this an invitation to help us calculate whether these ancient ghosts could actually be hiding in our telescopes.