where we truly do not understand...

[navi tasan]

“This is the first time in my career that I have studied an object where we truly do not understand why it looks the way it does,” said Jenny Greene, a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. “I think it’s fair to call them a mystery.”

Source:

Webb telescope photos show mysterious little red dots. Astronomers don’t know what they are

Hundreds of mysterious objects have appeared in images captured by the Webb space telescope. The curious dots could reshape scientists’ understanding of the cosmos.

www.yahoo.com

Is the sentence correct?

If it is what does 'where' mean in it?

Does "where we truly do not understand why it looks the way it does" postmodify "an object"?

Would the sentence be correct if 'where' were replaced by 'that'?

 

[jutfrank]

Is the sentence correct?

It depends what you mean by that.

If it is what does 'where' mean in it?

I think it means that there is some way in which the thought is represented cognitively, metaphorically, as a place. It's quite normal to use the idea of place to talk about particular situations or 'cases'. Notice that at the beginning of the sentence he leads with the idea of time (This is the first time ...) and then changes the framing to place.

Does "where we truly do not understand why it looks the way it does" postmodify "an object"?

Yes. It's a relative construction. I'll leave the syntax to someone else.

Would the sentence be correct if 'where' were replaced by 'that'?

No, that's not possible grammatically. However, this is fine:

This is the first time in my career that I have studied an object that we truly do not understand.

In the above sentence, an object is the grammatical object of the verb understand—the thing we don't understand is the object. In the original sentence, however, the thing we don't understand is not the object but rather why it looks the way it does.