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On burying the lede: or not

 




There are fully-formed galaxies very very far away -- more of them than there 'ought' to be according to the Big Bang theory of cosmology as it has developed over the last century or so. When we look at far distances we are of course looking backward in time given the fixed nature of the speed of light. At the very great distances that the JWST can reach we ought to be looking at the early universe, before there had been time for a lot of galaxy formation. It appears that something about the theory will have to be re-worked.  Below there is a link to a story about new developments in astronomy/cosmology:

https://www.vox.com/science/24040534/jwst-galaxies-big-bright-mystery-black-holes-cosmology

But what I really want to talk about today is that the article in question is a very bad piece of writing. The author, Brian Resnick, takes forever to get around to the point. 

Since Resnick buries it here, I just give you in the first graf what should have been his lede: There are fully-formed galaxies very far away -- more of them than there 'ought' to be according to the Big Bang theory of cosmology as it has developed over the last century or so. It appears that something about the theory will have to be re-worked. 

BTW: there are two bits of journalist jargon in the above paragraph. I'm sure Resnick is as familiar as I am with the spelling "lede" for a brief statement of the point of a story, which outsiders think is a misspelling for "lead". Also, I'm sure he recognizes "graf" with an "f" as the usual abbreviation for "paragraph."  

He too should have started there. A lede in the first graf! Instead he started with this sentence, "Not long after the James Webb Space Telescope came online in 2022, astronomers' jaws hit the floor."  So he signalled that he was going to get around to the news only after he had explained various parties' emotive reactions to the news. And indeed the signal was accurate.  

In paragraph twelve (twelve!) he says he has subjected us to "enough teasing" and will soon reveal the discovery that caused jaws to drop.  But he still doesn't! Instead, he digresses into the history of the JWST for another ten grafs or so.  

Finally, when he writes "When JWST went online, astronomers were eager...." he has gotten to where he should have started.  He is now more than half way through his story. This is astonishing because Resnick is often very good at what he does.  This time he was awful. 

Anyway: astronomer are apparently thinking to themselves, "hey-ho the Big Bang may have to go. "  

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