The standard model for how galaxies formed in the early universe predicted that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would see dim signals from small, primitive galaxies. But data are not confirming the popular hypothesis that invisible dark matter helped the earliest stars and galaxies clump together.

According to the researchers, the findings provide new clues that point toward an alternative to dark matter known as modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND. "The expectation was that every big galaxy we see in the nearby universe would have started from ...

The standard model for how galaxies formed in the early universe predicted that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would see dim signals from small, primitive galaxies. But data are not confirming