Yes, there would need to be much, much more study and evidence to change the accepted age of the universe. JWST has shown some "problematic" galaxies as the article notes, so it may indeed be true the universe is older than originally thought, but we aren't there yet.
... based on an... "interesting" model for the red shifting of light.
> Zwicky's tired light theory proposes that the redshift of light from distant galaxies is due to the gradual loss of energy by photons over vast cosmic distances. However, it was seen to conflict with observations. Yet Gupta found that "by allowing this theory to coexist with the expanding universe, it becomes possible to reinterpret the redshift as a hybrid phenomenon, rather than purely due to expansion."
> The concept was first proposed in 1929 by Fritz Zwicky, who suggested that if photons lost energy over time through collisions with other particles in a regular way, the more distant objects would appear redder than more nearby ones. ... Despite periodic re-examination of the concept, tired light has not been supported by observational tests and remains a fringe topic in astrophysics.
> Tired light theories challenge the common interpretation of Hubble's Law as a sign the universe is expanding. It was proposed by Fritz Zwicky in 1929. The basic proposal amounted to light losing energy ("getting tired") due to the distance it traveled rather than any metric expansion or physical recession of sources from observers. A traditional explanation of this effect was to attribute a dynamical friction to photons; the photons' gravitational interactions with stars and other material will progressively reduce their momentum, thus producing a redshift. Other proposals for explaining how photons could lose energy included the scattering of light by intervening material in a process similar to observed interstellar reddening. However, all these processes would also tend to blur images of distant objects, and no such blurring has been detected.
> Traditional tired light has been found incompatible with the observed time dilation that is associated with the cosmological redshift. This idea is mostly remembered as a falsified alternative explanation for Hubble's law in most astronomy or cosmology discussions.
The article really should not have even mentioned tired light. It's not really what Gupta is proposing. He is instead proposing that Dirac was correct about some things we view as constants not actually being constant.
> Scientists have confirmed that just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, time ran five times slower than it does today, 13.8 billion years later. Though scientists have long been aware that conditions just after Big Bang were radically different than those in the cosmos we see around us today, the discovery shows that time is relative in regards to the age of the Universe, too, just like Einstein predicted.
