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The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

skyandtelescope.org

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Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#221

Post by brap »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #151

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

Since everyone is mentioning their favorite whacky theories, mine is the one that says within every particle is a whole universe, made up of particles with their own universes and so on, and what we call our universe is really just a particle in an even bigger universe. And what if all of those universes were actually the same universe, like some infinite recursion?

Is there a name for this?

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#222

Post by nickersonm »

Maursault wrote: post #76
hnuser123456 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe is 13.7b yo, but due to acceleration of expansion, if you could "teleport", it's actually currently 93b ly across. So we're already in a bubble within a greater universe that we'll never be able to escape even if you could instantly reach lightspeed right now, and due to the expansion continuing to increase, the fractional size of this bubble relative to the rest is shrinking. Faraway galaxies that are "…

> The universe is 13.7b yo, but due to acceleration of expansion, if you could "teleport", it's actually currently 93b ly across. So we're already in a bubble within a greater universe that we'll never be able to escape This number, the age of the universe, has changed a few times since I learned to read 45 some years ago. What are the chances that this isn't really "the" universe, but what we know as the observable…

The number hasn't really changed, it's just been measured with increasing precision. It is rather unlikely to be wrong given measurements via various methods are all in agreement. Summaries about these various experiments are available: https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/featured_science/tenye...

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#223

Post by delecti »

dark-star wrote: post #208
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #151

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

My favorite theory is that the universe is finite, some sort of (hyper)sphere or -torus. If we could just look far enough out there we would see our own galaxy What would be even cooler is if it was warped like a moebius strip in a higher dimension, so that when we look out there, everything is mirrored from "our" reality :-D

That first theory would be interesting, but wouldn't it be basically impossible to prove unless the finite repeating universe were also pretty small? We see distant objects as they were in the past, and I'm not sure we'd recognize our own galaxy a billion years ago and a billion light years away.

It's actually an interesting thought experiment. If that theory were true, and assuming we could see ourselves face-on (rather than edge-on), then I wonder how far away and far back could we recognize ourselves.

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#224

Post by robg »

russdill wrote: post #218
robg wrote: post #121

Instead of one big bang, imagine an infinite number of big bangs, all colliding on a cosmic scale in time and space. That’s not necessarily a multiverse, but it is a megaverse with universe as the old paradigm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation

Yes, just why assume a multiverse and not a megaverse? Of course, the superhero movies (which I enjoy) give an unrealistic view of what a multiverse would be.

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#225

Post by someotherperson »

brap wrote: post #221
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #151

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

Since everyone is mentioning their favorite whacky theories, mine is the one that says within every particle is a whole universe, made up of particles with their own universes and so on, and what we call our universe is really just a particle in an even bigger universe. And what if all of those universes were actually the same universe, like some infinite recursion? Is there a name for this?

Men in Black marble hypothesis?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKnpPCQyUec

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#226

Post by brap »

someotherperson wrote: post #225
brap wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since everyone is mentioning their favorite whacky theories, mine is the one that says within every particle is a whole universe, made up of particles with their own universes and so on, and what we call our universe is really just a particle in an even bigger universe. And what if all of those universes were actually the same universe, like some infinite recursion? Is there a name for this?

Men in Black marble hypothesis? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKnpPCQyUec

I also vaguely recall something from The Simpsons…

Edit: ha, found it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#227

Post by michaelhoney »

abtinf wrote: post #211
NovaVeles wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel for the Weather pattern folk. All of the one I have spoken to over the years are pretty cool. They are trying to model an insanely complex system - oh but thanks to global warming they are struggling to make models that work for longer than a few years because it all keeps changing!

If “it all keeps changing”, which thwarts their attempts to “model an insanely complex system”, then wouldn’t that mean any claim about “global warming” is actually a claim to possessing a priori knowledge?

No. That the planet is warming is incontrovertible. What this might mean for highly interdependent, chaotic systems is harder to predict. Will the Greenland ice sheet melt? Looks like yes. Will that affect the Gulf Stream? Probably. Will that make Spain colder? again, probably, but the error bars are bigger, and so on.

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#228

Post by azalemeth »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #98
college_physics wrote: post #59

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" 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…

My favourite example of the intractabilities of some theories is that magnetohydronamics apparently can't predict the formation of streamer jets when you put your finger on a kid's plasma ball – i.e. the main point of the toy is beyond the most advanced theory that lies behind NIF, JET, ITER, etc...

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#229

Post by godshatter »

chrisweekly wrote: post #112
micromacrofoot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

assuming light from a big bang travels in all directions, then another big bang's light could be heading in our direction and potentially observable — the reason we can't observe the entirety of our universe is that spacetime is expanding in a way where light at the beginning isn't traveling fast enough to outpace expansion

wait, no, a big bang doesn't happen IN spacetime, it IS spacetime per se. that's part of what makes it so confusing.

What is spacetime expanding into?

Re: The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

#230

Post by dark-star »

delecti wrote: post #223
dark-star wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite theory is that the universe is finite, some sort of (hyper)sphere or -torus. If we could just look far enough out there we would see our own galaxy What would be even cooler is if it was warped like a moebius strip in a higher dimension, so that when we look out there, everything is mirrored from "our" reality :-D

That first theory would be interesting, but wouldn't it be basically impossible to prove unless the finite repeating universe were also pretty small? We see distant objects as they were in the past, and I'm not sure we'd recognize our own galaxy a billion years ago and a billion light years away. It's actually an interesting thought experiment. If that theory were true, and assuming we could see ourselves face-on (ra…

Yeah, I realize we're looking in the past and can't "see" ourselves (probably not even our own galaxy, depending how far out we have to look). But I guess the theory in itself is not any more "weird" or "outlandish" as the idea of an infinite universe.

And maybe if we actually look both ways, we could find another galaxy that could be proven to be the same (because of some particularly remarkable stars/quasars/supernovae etc. in them). Who knows, maybe the universe is smaller than we think and we just don't recognize the "same" galaxies on different images because they are billions of years apart?

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