Oxygen discovered in the most distant known galaxy

Oxygen is discovered in the most distant known galaxy at distance corresponding to the age 300 million years for the Universe (see the popular article). There are two articles related to the finding (see this and this). Researchers had thought that at that time the universe was still too young to have galaxies ripe with heavy elements. However, the two ALMA studies indicate JADES-GS-z14-0 has about 10 times more heavy elements, in particular oxygen, than expected. This does not conform with the standard story about the evolution of stars and the view of the formation of galaxies.

The conservative view (see this) is that everything conforms with the expectations: the heavy elements have been produced in very early massive galaxies showing as red dots in JWST data containing very massive and short-lived stars. The problem is that the origin of these very massive very early galaxies is far from being understood. The proponents of the standard cosmology are desperately defending the standard cosmology against empirical findings challenging it.

My own view is that the various anomalies leave only one conclusion: the views about astrophysics, galaxies, and cosmology based on the general relativistic notion of space-time are badly in need of updating. TGD suggests a dramatic modification of the notion of space-time leading to a new view about cosmic evolution, and galactic and astrophysics. Cosmic string like objects unstable against thickening to monopole flux tubes would be relevant for physics in all scales and also for the formation of galaxies, stars and even planets (see for instance this, this and this).

The zero energy ontology (ZEO) forced by TGD and solving the basic problem of quantum measurement theory predicts quantum coherence in arbitrarily long scales and that the arrow of time changes in "big" state function reductions (BSFRs) as counterparts of the ordinary SFRs. ZEO could explain stars and galaxies older than the Universe and could be highly relevant concerning the understanding of the findings of JWST. It could also allow us to understand why highly evolved galaxies appear in the very early Universe. The evolutionary age of the galaxy could be much longer than the usual age due to the living forth and back in geometric time.

In the following I will discuss only the possible role of the TGD based view of stars in attempts to understand the findings. Of course, the recent view of stellar evolution is regarded as more or less final. There are however numerous anomalies challenging it (see this). Could the recent findings mean an additional challenge for the model? The TGD based view of space-time suggests a rather radical view of the stellar evolution motivated by numerous anomalies of the standard model.

1. Nuclei would be formed, not in the stellar cores, but at the surfaces of stars, covered by monopole flux which give rise to what I call M₈₉ nuclear strings (see this). Also ordinary nuclei would be monopole flux tubes containing nucleons (see this). The monopole flux tubes carrying M₈₉ nuclei and connecting the Sun to the galactic nucleus or blackhole could have time independent dynamics in a good approximation.

   M₈₉ monopole flux tubes would decay by reconnection to flux loops and M₈₉ nucleons would decay to ordinary nucleons by a process that I call p-adic cooling (see this and this). In this cascade-like process process the p-adic prime characterizing the nucleon and near to a power 2 would gradually decrease and the mass scale of the M₈₉ hadrons would be reduced octave by octave and eventually reach M₁₀₇ mass scale which corresponds to the ordinary nucleons. This process would liberate energy and also give rise to anomalous gamma rays with energy range extending to TeV energies: these gamma rays indeed show up themselves as anomalies. It would also create solar wind and generate solar wind.

   M₈₉ nuclei could decay M₁₀₇ nuclei or to M₁₀₇ nucleons, which could fuse to dark M₁₀₇ nuclei by dark fusion and transform to ordinary nuclei liberating almost all of the ordinary nuclear binding energy. At the surface of the star a slowly evolving equilibrium would emerge and give rise to the aging of the star. The abundances of various atoms would depend on the age. The difference with respect to the standard model would be that nuclei at the surface of the Sun would not originate from the solar core and that hot fusion would be replaced with dark fusion explaining the "cold fusion" (see this).

2. The absorption line spectrum of the star is determined by the surface temperature of the star (see this). The nearby environment absorbs part of the radiation. The surface temperature and the metallicity of the star, now the metallicity of its surface, can be deduced from its spectrum.
3. TGD view differs from the standard picture since the nuclei are not endlessly recirculated via the stellar cores but produced at the surfaces of the stars from M₈₉ nuclei. The nuclei from the remnants of earlier stars can end up on the surface of the new stars but how important this contribution is, is not clear.
4. The finding that the very early Universe contains high metallicity stars is consistent with the TGD view. They could be massive stars believed to have existed in very massive galaxies in the very early Universe. The TGD based model should be able to explain stellar generations and also the empirical absence of population III stars representing the hypothetical first generation stars containing mostly hydrogen and helium. A possible explanation is that dark fusion also produces heavier elements and they emerge from the very beginning. This would also explain the recent evidence for high abundances of heavier elements. Note that population II stars old and metal-poor. Population I stars relatively young and metal-rich.

   In the standard model young stars are identified as later stellar generations and have high metallicity due to the metals produced in the fusion in the core. The initial state of the core for the fusion would be determined by the abundances of the metals produced in supernova explosions of the earlier star generations.

   In the TGD framework, one is forced to challenge the notion of stellar generations. Could the metallicity at the surface of a young star be always high and could it decrease during aging so that old stars with a low metallicity would have evolved from stars with higher metallicity? Why would metallicity be reduced with aging? Gravitational binding energy is larger for the heavier nuclei. Could the lighter nuclei remain near the surface and the heavier nuclei sink towards the core as in the case of Earth?

See the article Some Solar Mysteries of the chapter with the same title.