Thank you Ethan for another terrific article. However, I still don't understand.

Let's imagine that the Webb telescope is able to detect a light source (star or galaxy) at a distance of 13.6 Billion light years. To me, that means that 13.6 billion years ago, that star sent out photons that are just now arriving at earth. Now assume that the Webb does the same thing in all 6 directions (up, down, right, left, front, back). If the Webb continues to pick up light from 13.6 billion years ago in all directions, that tells me two things:

1. The radius of the universe increased from about 1 meter to 13.6 billion light years in only about 200M years. It is amazing that almost instantly after the Big Bang stars are radiating at distances of 13.6 billion light years in all directions. If we are able to detect light older than 13.6 years, that makes the early expansion rate even more incredible. Since then (in the last 13.6 billion years), it has only increased up to 46.1 billion light years.

2. That the Earth just happens to be right in the middle of the Universe. How could this be? Why don't we see stars at 13.6 billion light years in one direction and see very little in the other direction? I don't see how it could look to us like a uniform sphere as you show at the beginning of the article. Do astronomers really believe that Earth is in the middle of the known Universe? Random chance should require the Universe to appear to us to be different in various directions. Perhaps one could argue the the expansion of the fabric of space is such that even if we are near the edge of the Universe, we would still see light in all directions at 13.6 billion light years. But surely, there would be density differences. To me, this is the biggest gap in the entire Big Bang theory.

Of course, the concept of dark energy and dark matter still doesn't make much sense, but I am willing to give scientists more time to unlock the mysteries of those mathematical placeholders.