This is good. If we merely confirm what we expect to see, then we don't learn anything new.
The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
141–150 of 547 posts
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#142I 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?
GPT3 cant even play tic tac toe properly (at least in my attempts). What makes you believe it can build and manipulate a model of the universe, and then answer questions about that model in a way that goes beyond what humans can do?
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> there isn't even an accepted explanation for why rubbing a balloon on your head makes it stick to a wall You mean dielectric moments and static electricity? Electromagnetism is the one thing we know the most about. It's that spooky gravity junk that makes us scratch our heads. It never seems to behave quite right and doesn't mesh with all the other forces.
> You mean dielectric moments and static electricity?
You're confusing what with why. My understanding is that everyone knows it has something to do with electrons collecting on the balloon; but nobody quite knows why rubbing rubber against hair causes the electrons to do that.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#144I 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…
Would you bet that we'll see a paradigm shift of a similar nature to the classical physics -> quantum mechanics / relativity paradigm change, but for Cosmology in our lifetimes?
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
That rate is "only" approximately 68 kilometers per second per megaparsec. 68 kps isn't that fast (it's about the same speed as the Helios 2 solar probe) and a mega parsec is big distance (3.2M light years). Its that there's a lot of megaparsecs between here and there and the sum of all of those 68 kps is more than the speed of light. The relevant Kurzgesagt : TRUE Limits Of Humanity – The Final Border We Will Never…
So such an expansion phenomenon should affect everything uniformly right? Are we (people /animals) then getting "bigger"? Over time innthe extreme will it cause problems in signal transmission in our own nervous systems (since apparently we have a problem seeing light beyond the observable limit)
You don’t get larger - just like you don’t dissolve in water and wind doesn’t spread parts of you all over the land. There are interactions of matter keeping you together.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#146Earlier 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"
They haven’t but they will
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#147Earlier 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. It will never reach us. It's actually even worse than that. Because of the accelerating expansion of the universe, over time the part of the universe that we can observe will get smaller, allowing us to see less and less of it. Eventually, all that we…
So galaxies are falling off the edge of the universe never to be seen again?
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#148This is good. If we merely confirm what we expect to see, then we don't learn anything new.
Not so sure. If we're not early ourselves, the likelihood that the universe is swimming in intelligence -- if not already part of an enormous computational fabric -- is higher. That naively seems like it would place an upper limit on Earth-originated intelligences.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
That rate is "only" approximately 68 kilometers per second per megaparsec. 68 kps isn't that fast (it's about the same speed as the Helios 2 solar probe) and a mega parsec is big distance (3.2M light years). Its that there's a lot of megaparsecs between here and there and the sum of all of those 68 kps is more than the speed of light. The relevant Kurzgesagt : TRUE Limits Of Humanity – The Final Border We Will Never…
So such an expansion phenomenon should affect everything uniformly right? Are we (people /animals) then getting "bigger"? Over time innthe extreme will it cause problems in signal transmission in our own nervous systems (since apparently we have a problem seeing light beyond the observable limit)
With the current rate of expansion, no. We're still bound together more tightly than the rate. This extends all the way out to a fair distance (galactic distance).
If the rate does get to the point where it is noticeable the "galaxies can't hold together" you get into the Big Rip end of the universe situation.
Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it is fair to characterize cosmology as not making progress no. Stuff is far away and occluded and hard to measure and see. Each improvement in observation causes a need to refine previous ideas, as expected. There are of course the two big mysteries that have lingered for a long time: Dark Matter and Dark Energy, but other areas of physics have lingering mysteries as well.
I almost had the same reaction, but technically they didn't say anything about cosmology not making progress. It's entirely reasonable to assume a scientifically minded person describing a field as "piling up question marks" means they think it's making a LOT of progress. Imagine a field that answers questions more often than it finds new ones; that'd be a pretty stagnant field to be in.
This is how I understood OP, too. Last time we had a "crisis in physics", it was the early transition from classical physics to quantum mechanics, when some good new ideas had been coinceived of, but trying to reconcile them with the classical way of thinking and with experimental evidence required increasingly convoluted hacks in the models to make it all work - until folks like Heisenberg, Born, Jordan and Dirac found more holistic and clean ways to approach the problem space.
The number of question marks piling up in cosmology does feel similar. It will help to shape new theories that reconcile all this experimental evidence.