“Too Fast and Too Furious: Has the first year of JWST data broken the LCDM model?”

Abstract: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA’s latest great flagship observatory, was built in part to reveal the earliest moments of cosmic history. Over the last ~15 months since it began releasing data to the public, JWST has enthralled scientists and the public alike with the incredible images and spectroscopic information from astronomical objects as nearby as our solar system and beyond to the most distant reaches of the Universe. The astronomical community has set distance records, found galaxies that may be significantly larger than models suggest could exist, and demonstrated that in some cases galaxy and supermassive black hole formation was earlier and more rapid than we had ever expected. Indeed some of the earliest examples found by my team and others were quickly shown to be so extreme that at face value they present a challenge to our standard models to describe the growth of structure. In this talk, I will discuss this controversy that sparked public attention and highlight some of the exciting results from my group at Pitt and my UNCOVER (Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization, https://jwst-uncover.github.io/) Treasury program.