Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

skyandtelescope.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 547 posts

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

#301

Post by moloch-hai »

b800h wrote: post #77
cevn wrote: post #4

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?

There is a wonderful sequence in the (2nd?) Book of Enoch (~150AD?), where the viewer is transported up through the heavens, past the planets, and finally beyond the stars, and eventually sees the incomprehensible face of God lying behind it all, visible all across the far end of space. So perhaps that? :-)

Great flaming letters spelling out "We apologize for the inconvenience".

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

#302

Post by narag »

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

The funny thing is that since we've been observing the universe for so little time, and we're so small, most of the evidence for the big bang and expansion is not direct, but a chain of deductions.

I mean that we can't observe the expansion because we can't really triangulate at galactic scale. If there is another reason the light from distant galaxies turn to red, kind of a long-distance light fatigue, we couldn't really know.

The reason I always heard that would be a confirmation, because it comes from a different causal path, was precisely the different composition of old galaxies. And now it seems they're not so sure.

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

#303

Post by comicjk »

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 understanding is that the standard model likely does predict static electricity, but since it's a phenomenon bigger than a few molecules, we have no way to actually run the simulation. The physics is willing but the computers are weak.

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

#304

Post by karmelapple »

brap wrote: post #226
someotherperson wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which itself is based off the intro the film Contact: https://youtu.be/EWwhQB3TKXA

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

#305

Post by 77pt77 »

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…

Everyone knows that general relativity is broken.

Plus cosmology has the problem that you can't really conduct reproducible experiments.

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

#306

Post by TillE »

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 favorite poorly understood phenomenon in basic physics is the Mpemba effect, where hot water can freeze faster than cold water under certain circumstances. It's just phase changes of water in a simple experiment you can do at home, and I think there's still no widely accepted explanation.

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

#307

Post by bardworx »

comicjk wrote: post #303
sebzim4500 wrote: post #98

Earlier 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…

My understanding is that the standard model likely does predict static electricity, but since it's a phenomenon bigger than a few molecules, we have no way to actually run the simulation. The physics is willing but the computers are weak.

This seems incorrect as it’s just an imbalance of charge and isn’t a strange phenomena.

Can you provide a reference, please?

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

#308

Post by whaaswijk »

tommoor wrote: post #299
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this is why simulation theory is popular.

Much like god, that just pushes the question up one level

While I agree that simulation theory pushes the question up a level, that is not the case for the God of classical theism.

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

#309

Post by KMag »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #269
dinkumthinkum wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t solve non-trivial bugs. It can bugs that match patterns that have been asked a lot if Stackoverflow or something like that.

I love the sound of goal posts as they go whooshing past.

I think it's more likely a problem that the GP poorly worded their initial statement, rather than actually moving the goalposts. They were probably having trouble with a few thorny bugs, tried ChatGPT, got nowhere, and forgot to qualify their initial statement with "for the few non-trivial bugs I tried".

From the external point of view, the goalposts moved, but from within the GP's poorly expressed mental model, they haven't moved. But, that's just a guess.

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

#310

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]
Post reply on HN