Worth noting: For a very long time MOND has been predicting earlier galaxies than LCDM.
Yeah, but is it even worth saying that when the response will inevitably be "so what?" by the entrenched anti-MOND orthodoxy?
The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
91–100 of 547 posts
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#92I 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" i…
> 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. Could we train a GPT3 like model with the entire corpus of astronomical research and try to answer some questions that way?
The article mentions that they're training neural networks to classify these objects. Give it a decade and this kind of high level number crunching will be as common as calculators are today. Transformers will find their place in all of this, and I am confident we will have a breakthrough in a few years regarding novel synthesis.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#93I 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" i…
> 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. Could we train a GPT3 like model with the entire corpus of astronomical research and try to answer some questions that way?
FWIW, I've tried asking ChatGPT to walk through some thought experiments.
Things like, what happens if I shoot two bullet at c/2 in opposite directions on a train going at c/2? Now suppose, I'm an outside observer. And then trying to introduce quantum gravity.
My thought was that perhaps it could 'reason through'. Unfortunately, it was unable to. Eventually, it said that this is an unsolved problem. In other words, it 'recognized' the thought experiments. Perhaps if you use a phrasing that's not in the literature.
EDIT: Actually, just checked again, and chatgpt can't reason through relativity anymore:
Me: Imagine I'm on a train traveling at half the speed of light. I'm in the middle of a car and I fire bullets going at half the speed of light towards the front and back of the car. Do the bullets arrive at the front and back of the car at the same time?
ChatGPT: No, the bullet fired towards the front of the car will arrive at the front of the car first, while the bullet fired towards the back of the car will arrive at the back of the car later. This is because the front bullet is moving in the same direction as the train and the back bullet is moving in the opposite direction of the train. The relative velocity of the bullet and train will determine the time it takes for the bullet to reach the front or back of the car.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without getting into lots of detail, this is basically correct. It's why we talk about the observable universe. There's lots of stuff we can't see because the light from it won't reach us.
how can that work if nothing is faster than light in the referential of the objects being compared? is it that space expands faster than light moves?
Ah. So it's a referential thing?
If we had some absolute zero reference outside the universe - let's call it a great alien petri dish - we probably could find something moving faster than the speed of light, in reference to that absolute, out-of-universe observation point? But measuring that might be hard.
And on the other hand, we might be able to find two objects which are static with reference to the universe, but actually increasing the distance from each other at a speed beyond c or rather 2c, which should be impossible, because the universe between them expands?
This is very weird to think about, but accepting your reference framework - the universe - changes makes it easier.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#95I've often wondered if matter from another galaxy is behaving the same way it does here on the macroscopic level, but varies at the atomic level.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Could we train a GPT3 like model with the entire corpus of astronomical research and try to answer some questions that way?
Already done. They came back with the answer: "42"
You're really not going to like it
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Could we train a GPT3 like model with the entire corpus of astronomical research and try to answer some questions that way?
If you give GPT3 code with a bug in it, and ask it to find the bug, it can't really do that. I'm pretty sure giving it all the data and asking it why things aren't working the way it should, it wouldn't have actual knowledge. There's a depth to explaining things that GPT still can't do. It's still astonishing, and has completely changed my idea on what AI can do, like write plays with very incredible context (better…
>If you give GPT3 code with a bug in it, and ask it to find the bug, it can't really do that.
The hell are you talking about? I've been doing this literally any time I need something fixed and it does just fine.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#98I 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" i…
I think this says less about cosmology and more about the incredibly effectiveness of the standard model in the regime we can test directly on earth.
If we compare ΛCDM to most other scientific theories it doesn't look so bad in terms of discrepancies. Certainly there are many unexplained effects in solid state physics, there isn't even an accepted explanation for why rubbing a balloon on your head makes it stick to a wall and that's an experiment you probably did as a child.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct, as I understand it. No matter can travel at the speed of light, and no light can travel faster than the speed of light. But the rule doesn't extend to the rate of expansion of the "field" on which those things exist.
When I read this, it seems to me like this is more or less the same as saying that the speed of light is decreasing, but I am probably wrong?
Is this something anybody ever thought out to look at things this way? Sounds like an intriguing Gedankenexperiment
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because the light from it won't reach us. This is one of the most interesting aspects to the universe. It's not, "because the light from it hasn't reached us yet but is on the way and will get here eventually." Rather it's that the rate of expansion of the universe is accelerating, so that we're moving away from parts of it faster than its light can cover the distance to us. It will never reach us. That's mindboggl…
> Rather it's that the rate of expansion of the universe is accelerating, so that we're moving away from parts of it faster than its light can cover the distance to us. From my understanding, it's not that we're moving away from parts of the universe, but that the distance between us is growing so fast that light sent from one part will find that after traveling toward us for some amount of time, the remaining distan…
You have it right. My cosmology teacher at UVA a couple decades ago used the analogy of points marked on the surface of a balloon that's being inflated. (maybe more intuitive than other shortcuts to understanding?)