The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies(skyandtelescope.org)
skyandtelescope.org
The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/the-james-webb-space-telescope-is-finding-too-many-early-galaxies/
526 comments
This was predicted by astronomer Stacy McGaugh on his super interesting blog as a natural consequence of modified Newtonian dynamics (https://tritonstation.com/2022/01/03/what-jwst-will-see/).
McGaugh came to support MOND over dark matter reluctantly for just such reasons—MOND routinely predicts things in advance that dark matter struggles to justify ex post facto, usually by adding additional moving parts to the model.
Whether or not you find the evidence persuasive, McGaugh's blog is worth a deep dive just to appreciate the subtleties and complexities of this kind of observational astronomy.
McGaugh came to support MOND over dark matter reluctantly for just such reasons—MOND routinely predicts things in advance that dark matter struggles to justify ex post facto, usually by adding additional moving parts to the model.
Whether or not you find the evidence persuasive, McGaugh's blog is worth a deep dive just to appreciate the subtleties and complexities of this kind of observational astronomy.
I don't know if this instance qualifies as one, but I think its fair to say that cosmology is the one domain of "fundamental" physics where "discrepancies" or question marks keep piling up and not really resolving.
It the pattern of previous science revolutions repeats, there could come a point where reinterpreting the large existing body of knowledge using a different paradigm would explain an number of "oddities" in a more economical way.
I don't know if this generation of telescopes will get us there but it feels that this is a plausible outcome over the next 1-2 decades. Which would be very exciting :-)
It the pattern of previous science revolutions repeats, there could come a point where reinterpreting the large existing body of knowledge using a different paradigm would explain an number of "oddities" in a more economical way.
I don't know if this generation of telescopes will get us there but it feels that this is a plausible outcome over the next 1-2 decades. Which would be very exciting :-)
I'm going to be very amused if the Steady State Model - an unpopular relic from the 1940s - turns out to be correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_model
Experiment results that disagree with theory is EXCITING. I hope this contributes to progress and I'm giddy just imagining the model of the universe we have 50 or 100 or 500 years from now.
Great news. Finding stuff that doesn't fit into the current model and we need smart people to get to work understanding may be the surest sign that the JWST is invaluable.
Cosmology is one of those fields where I suspect we'll always be finding things that don't match with theory because we can never know nor replicate the initial state of the Universe.
There's also a lot of fundamental questions we don't have answers on. For example:
- What does space expanding actually mean? Is space stretching or is new space being created? If so, what is the mechanism for that?
- Is time a fumdanental property of the Universe or is it an emergent property?
- What are the fundamental intereptations of quantum mechanics [1]?
And so on.
The cosmic microwave background is our earliest yet observation from the Universe. Before this the Universe was really too dense and hot for radiation signatures to survive. Interestingly, we may be able to peak even earlier than that with the cosmic neutrino background [2].
But there are a ton of things about the early Universe's formation and expansion we will probably never know and will only be able to guess at with models that will always break at a certain point.
[1]: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/~doug/quantum_physics/interpre...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_neutrino_background
There's also a lot of fundamental questions we don't have answers on. For example:
- What does space expanding actually mean? Is space stretching or is new space being created? If so, what is the mechanism for that?
- Is time a fumdanental property of the Universe or is it an emergent property?
- What are the fundamental intereptations of quantum mechanics [1]?
And so on.
The cosmic microwave background is our earliest yet observation from the Universe. Before this the Universe was really too dense and hot for radiation signatures to survive. Interestingly, we may be able to peak even earlier than that with the cosmic neutrino background [2].
But there are a ton of things about the early Universe's formation and expansion we will probably never know and will only be able to guess at with models that will always break at a certain point.
[1]: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/~doug/quantum_physics/interpre...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_neutrino_background
This is good. If we merely confirm what we expect to see, then we don't learn anything new.
Is it possible that the 'edge' of universe reflects light? Have scientists been able to conclusively rule that out somehow?
Does the universe even have an edge? What is our current understanding of what the boundaries of the universe might be like?
Does the universe even have an edge? What is our current understanding of what the boundaries of the universe might be like?
Can someone explain to me what would be behind the galaxies if we could see it, to the point of 0 seconds after the big bang? Black, white, is it even possible?
So there could've been civilizations that are literally BILLIONS of years ahead of us? Imagine what these people know about the universe!
This reminds me of the Star Wars lead-in: "A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away." It really could've happened you know!
This reminds me of the Star Wars lead-in: "A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away." It really could've happened you know!
Ethan Siegel isn't so certain: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/most-distant-galaxie...
The tl;dr is that we're finding quite a few red galaxies and red can mean distant (and therefore old) but you need to follow-up and do further direct measurements of each galaxy to be really certain that it's old and not red looking for some other reason.
Some of these unexpectedly red galaxies have been followed up on, and some are indeed old, but it's not enough data points yet to be certain of anything.
The fun part of science is that either way it's pretty exciting!
The tl;dr is that we're finding quite a few red galaxies and red can mean distant (and therefore old) but you need to follow-up and do further direct measurements of each galaxy to be really certain that it's old and not red looking for some other reason.
Some of these unexpectedly red galaxies have been followed up on, and some are indeed old, but it's not enough data points yet to be certain of anything.
The fun part of science is that either way it's pretty exciting!
Something is wrong with the cosmic distance ladder. Space is anisotropic, or gravity interacts with itself somehow. The distances are not what they seem to be. I think this will eventually be the solution to the galaxy rotation / dark matter problem.
Worth noting: For a very long time MOND has been predicting earlier galaxies than LCDM.
I always wonder if light traveled billions of years to get here wouldn’t it be possible that it got distorted along the way? What if all these galaxies are just a sort of a typical pattern of what light looks like after an unfathomably long journey through space/gravity/time/etc? It could be likely that what we’re seeing is no indication of what was ever actually out there.
This can further reinforce the idea that the unobservable universe was always there and that the big bang is only a pattern of movement of the cluster of galaxies and it is only the information that has managed to arrive from our position.I want to see how big bang theory falls into an optical illusion.
I may be stupid, but considering that the models of galaxy stability are based on a universe where we are made from star stuff and not energy stuff, is it not possible that they formed way quicker with less complication because it was basically only hydrogen and empty space?
Does this mean that big bang either didn't happen or happened in a different way that we think of it? Or happened far earlier than we think it did? Complete layman here.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2622/
Sorry for an likely ignorant question, but can someone ELI5 why we are confident that evereything in universe is less than 13 billion years old or whatnot, and not just redshifted beyond recognition?
Can you do spectroscopy on images of the galaxies to see how much stuff other than heydrogen and helium there was?
Ok, so if the Big Bang Theory is bunk, what’s the next leading alternative creation theory?
Maybe, just maybe the Universe is infinite and eternal? and the big bang never happened?
I don't know why articles are titled like this. it's annoying, though, I'll tell you that
we are finding the exact correct number of galaxies of the exact correct ages; our expectations are wrong, or how we determine what we've found is wrong. generally, our understanding is wrong. not the rest of the entire universe.
we are finding the exact correct number of galaxies of the exact correct ages; our expectations are wrong, or how we determine what we've found is wrong. generally, our understanding is wrong. not the rest of the entire universe.
Our scientists are engineers and our artists are logicians.
The telescopes are always amazing
The telescopes are always amazing
Some more interesting food for thought:
>The classical big bang cosmological models describe gravitation by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. These models are able to treat the matter content of the universe quantum mechanically where appropriate, but they do not take into account the interplay of quantum theory and gravity.... The earliest universe was presumably quantum mechanical through and through, and we can no longer describe its initial conditions in a classical language. We must instead treat the whole early universe as a quantum system and formulate its initial conditions in the language of quantum mechanics.... Quantum gravity theorists have not shied away from the challenge. At present there are some half a dozen contenders...."
https://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlight/quantum_cosmo_...
>The classical big bang cosmological models describe gravitation by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. These models are able to treat the matter content of the universe quantum mechanically where appropriate, but they do not take into account the interplay of quantum theory and gravity.... The earliest universe was presumably quantum mechanical through and through, and we can no longer describe its initial conditions in a classical language. We must instead treat the whole early universe as a quantum system and formulate its initial conditions in the language of quantum mechanics.... Quantum gravity theorists have not shied away from the challenge. At present there are some half a dozen contenders...."
https://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlight/quantum_cosmo_...
df = pd.DataFrame( universe )
Warning: Specify dtype option on import or set low_memory=False.
Warning: Specify dtype option on import or set low_memory=False.
RIP Big Bang Theory
I've always wondered where the universe is.
The Universe AI is trolling us.
"Yan found 87 distant galaxies behind the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723" --> this is not true. They found 87 galaxy candidates. To be fair to the article, they do note that these await spectroscopic confirmation but experts only believe those with spectroscopic confirmation. Everything else is tentative and we don't yet have good numbers on confirmation rates. Finally, the Yan et al candidates are wildly inconsistent with almost every other estimate of high-redshift galaxy samples. You can see a comparison in Table 4 here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.06683.pdf. They claim more than double the number of high-redshift sources compared to everyone else. JWST data is still very new and hard to both reduce and analyze. One particular problem is correlated hot pixels which can appear as very high-redshift sources. I don't know if this impacts the Yan et al paper but just an example of something that is not 100% straightforward to deal with. I highly recommend people take this with a healthy amount of skepticism until everything has a spectrum.