Accelerated Structure Formation: the Early Emergence of Massive Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies

Galaxies in the early universe appear to have grown too big too fast, assembling into massive, monolithic objects more rapidly than anticipated in the hierarchical CDM structure formation paradigm. The available data are consistent with there being a population of massive galaxies that form early (z 10) and follow an approximately exponential star formation history with a short (1 Gyr) e-folding timescale on the way to becoming massive (M_* 10^11\;M_) galaxies by z = 0, consistent with the traditional picture for the evolution of giant elliptical galaxies. Observations of the kinematics of spiral galaxies as a function of redshift similarly show that massive disks and their scaling relations were in place at early times, indicating a genuine effect in mass that cannot be explained as a quirk of luminosity evolution. That massive galaxies could form by z = 10 was explicitly predicted in advance by MOND. We discuss some further predictions of MOND, such as the early emergence of clusters of galaxies and the cosmic web.