Ever since it opened its giant infrared eye on the cosmos after its December 2021 launch, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found a shocking surfeit of bright galaxies that stretch back to the very early universe. Their brightnessa proxy for their numbers of stars and hence their massis deeply puzzling because galaxies shouldn't have had enough time to become so bulky in such early cosmic epochs.
Most people would put their money on the astrophysical explanation right now, says Mike Boylan-Kolchin, a cosmologist at the University of Texas at Austin. I'd count myself in that category as well.
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