JWST's UV luminosity functions at z of 9 to 14 show bright galaxies in excess of essentially all pre-JWST models, by factors reaching several to ten at z of 12 to 14, with number density declining far more slowly than the exponentially collapsing halo population permits (JADES; UNCOVER; Whitler 2025). Spectroscopy has closed the contamination escape, and the repairs, boosted efficiency, top-heavy IMFs, burstiness, hidden AGN, multiply faster than they discriminate.
The UV luminosity function inherits the halo mass function: galaxy counts at fixed brightness must fall exponentially toward high redshift because the halos do. A bright-end census that persists across that collapse has nowhere to come from except per-epoch boosts to the light-per-halo bookkeeping, invoked exactly where they cannot be independently checked.
SCT replaces the exponential halo clock with the collision mass function: proto-structures condense at masses set by deposition geometry, with a number density evolving as a shallow power law, (1+z) to the power -0.5 +/- 0.3, rather than an exponential cutoff (P56, P22). The UV luminosity function's slow bright-end evolution is that power law read in starlight: seeded systems exist, massive and star-forming, through epochs where hierarchical growth has barely begun, so the census persists at z of 12 to 14 without any per-epoch boost to efficiency, IMF, or dust. The excess over pre-JWST models is the registered prediction confirmed: galaxy counts at z above 14 following a power-law decline, with the chemical maturity of the same systems (the z of 14 oxygen) carried by the identical seeding head start.
The quantitative stake is already on the books: the Roman High Latitude Wide Area Survey forecast of order 1600 galaxies above 10¹⁰ solar masses at z of 12 to 15 (range 550 to 4770), against fewer than 3 in the standard model: a four-orders-of-magnitude discrimination awaiting one survey. Burstiness, IMF variations, and AGN light remain real secondary modulations of the light-per-system bookkeeping, but the census itself, the number of systems, is the keystone quantity, and it follows the seeds.
This is the same deposition demographics behind the z of 14 masses, the early disks, and the Little Red Dots. There is no need to re-tune star formation physics epoch by epoch to keep up with the counts.
The registered kills: JWST spectroscopic programs at z above 14 finding zero galaxies above 10⁸ solar masses, consistent with exponential suppression, would break the power-law census; and Roman finding fewer than 100 galaxies above 10¹⁰ solar masses at z of 12 to 15, more than 2.3σ below the SCT band, falsifies the collision mass function at the high-mass end. The shape is also exposed: a bright-end decline steepening to exponential in the wide-area data restores the halo clock.