For many years, cosmologists have claimed the Universe is 13.8 billion years old. A new paper says no, it’s 26.7 billion.

This tiny region of the JADES survey shows a mix of galaxies: some that are relatively nearby, large, highly evolved, and massive; others that are at intermediate distances and have a mix of old-and-young stars in them, and a great number of very distant or even ultra-distant galaxies that are faint, heavily reddened, and potentially from the first 5% of our cosmic history. In this one little region, the power of JWST, and the evolution of the angular scale and star-formation rate of the Universe, is on full display. Views like this, of the Universe, were unfathomable just a few short decades

According to the “Standard Model” of cosmology, the Universe is 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter, 5% normal matter, and is 13.8 billion years old: as measured since the hot Big Bang. Recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), however, have found numerous galaxies that appear early, but look surprisingly grown-up. A new theory claims to solve this “early, grown-up galaxies” problem by changing the age of the Universe to 26.7 billion years old.