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The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies

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401–410 of 547 posts

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

#401

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…

There is the esoteric "Cosmological Natural Selection" theory that predicts the discrepancies. This guy at https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/archive explains his version of this theory (albeit in an emotional way) that I find a pleasant read.

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

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the benefit of the telescope orbiting other planets than earth?

I can't imagine any, besides redundancy and more observation time.

Interferometry.

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

#403
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, let me introduce you to metastability ....

Is that computer science or is that physics though?

well a bit of both - if someone hasn't given you the scary meta stability lecture you haven't really done computer science :-)

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

#404
post #126
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there isn't even an accepted explanation for why rubbing a balloon on your head makes it stick to a wall But the accepted explanation is "static electricity", no? Or do you mean we don't "really" know when asking a couple of follow-up "why?" questions further?

At that point why not call it “witchcraft;” a sciencey word for something is not an explanation.

Hail science https://youtu.be/tl55gVXsBZE

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

#405

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…

which part. how is that not electostatics and van der walls forces?

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

#406

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 m…

Any publications indicate whether Refracted Gravity (RG) predicts the same thing? RG has always fascinated me, since it neatly explains flat rotation curves[1] without messing up the equations for gravity too much. If some refractory effect (TBD) causes gravity to bend toward mass concentrations, then this effectively "confines" gravity into a plane. Then the propagation law becomes 1/r rather than 1/r^2. In effect i…

>without messing up the equations for gravity too much. If some refractory effect (TBD) causes gravity to bend toward mass concentrations, then this effectively "confines" gravity into a plane. Then the propagation law becomes 1/r rather than 1/r^2.

There are objects like globular clusters and dwarf galaxies that lie outside the galactic plane, but are not that far away. If our galaxy's gravity was confined to its plane, you would expect nearby external objects to move differently from how they are observed to move. See illustration:

https://cdn.britannica.com/23/4423-050-964A0A08/Distribution...

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

#407
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nah, lots of things eat viruses. It's nothing unusual at all. You > eat viruses, I eat viruses. They are everywhere, after all. When an engineer walks in front of an idling jet engine you don't say the jet eats viruses.

To be more precise, viruses are just made up of proteins and DNA / RNA. Your normal digestion that can handle proteins and DNA/RNA from animals, plants etc doesn't have any more problem breaking down virus proteins into amino acids and absorbing them.

I think the OP was talking about the bacteria that derive non-negligible sustenance from viruses.

>Moreover, our foraging trials demonstrated robust growth in the Halteria population with only chloroviruses as food (rint = 0.66 ± 0.26 [SD], black lines, Fig. 1A), with minimal to no growth in the controls (with chloroviruses filtered out; rint = 0.22 ± 0.12 [SD], blue lines, Fig. 1C). The abundance of the larger Paramecium did not increase in treatment or control trials (Fig. 1D), indicating that not all ciliates can grow on chloroviruses in these conditions, even when they consume them.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2215000120

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

#408
post #302

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…

> 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.

It's not just red shift that demands an explanation, but also that the sky (space) is dark. If space wasn't expanding then the skies would be bright white.

Another thing is the second law of thermodynamics, which very strongly implies a lot of standard cosmology.

Of course, standard cosmology could be all wrong, but these deductions are quite solid as far as the physics that we know today.

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

#409
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. It's not just red shift that demands an explanation, but also that the sky (space) is dark. If space wasn't expanding then the skies would be bright white. Another thing is the second law of thermodynamics, which very strongly implies a lot of standard cosmology. Of course, standar…

Why would it be bright white?

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

#410
Articles like these make me want to stop doing everything and isolate in the basement for several months to study physics. Then I realize I have a family to feed and elderly parents to take care for.

Sigh, so many beautiful mysteries in the world, and only one life.

edit: A friend told me germans have the word "Sehnsucht" to describe such a feeling. So I guess it might be somewhat universal.

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