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Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

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Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#61

Post by Steuard »

arcastroe wrote: post #46

I've asked this question before, but I don't think I received a good answer, so figured I'd try asking again. How do we know that galaxies are accelerating away from us and not moving at constant speed? People often point to the observation that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving away from us, implying acceleration. However, wouldn't we expect to see the same observation even without any…

You're right: the "more distant galaxies are moving away faster" point is just Hubble's original observation of an expanding universe. It's not an argument for cosmic acceleration. (If you see people making that claim, they're probably either speaking carelessly or not experts themselves.)

The conclusion that the expansion is accelerating was a quite recent result: 1990s, I believe. It's based on careful measurements of supernova explosions of a type with computable intrinsic brightness in increasingly distant galaxies, and the exact pattern seen in their apparent redshifts vs. apparent brightness. It was a shocking discovery when it came out, with two separate teams announcing the result pretty much neck and neck. There's also independent and compatible evidence for acceleration from the exact pattern of variations in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background seen at different points in the sky.

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#62

Post by runeb »

arcastroe wrote: post #46

I've asked this question before, but I don't think I received a good answer, so figured I'd try asking again. How do we know that galaxies are accelerating away from us and not moving at constant speed? People often point to the observation that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving away from us, implying acceleration. However, wouldn't we expect to see the same observation even without any…

Their light is more red shifted the farther away they are. I'm no expert on this, but I believe in a constant-speed scenario they would have equal red shift no matter the distance

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#63

Post by elashri »

db48x wrote: post #52
dartos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d assume that we have some notion of how the laws of physics have changed, if at all, since the Big Bang. We measure time in vibrations of a cesium isotope IIRC

No, we measure the frequency of vibrations of _light_, not of a type of atom. Specifically, it is light emitted by cesium atoms that are transitioning from one specific energy state to another specific energy state. Although this is arbitrary, it is highly reproducible and would give precisely the same measured lengths of time at any point since the big bang.

That assumes that fundamental laws of physics did not change (will not change). This is what we believe and have no evidence otherwise. This is important since we rely on measuring atomic transitions of cesium atoms which itself were formed/forming billions of years after the big bang itself.

The laws of physics invariance under time is a core to our understanding. It would be very disrupting if we found otherwise.

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#64

Post by chadcmulligan »

harywilke wrote: post #50
jdiff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of the tinfoil, it just sounds like the universe is complex and not always predictable.

It's amazing that barely a 100 years ago The Great Debate in astronomy was weather the Milky Way was the extent of the universe or things like Andromeda were their own 'island universes'. In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble showed that Andromeda was far outside the Milky Way by measuring Cepheid variable stars. These are the same stars that we are measuring today in this debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Debate_(ast…

And not much longer before that the discussion was how long would the sun last - 5,000 years or so was the estimate if it was a big ball of burning gas (source: A scientific American article I read, wish I could find it again, hoping someone here knows)

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#65

Post by cowgoesmoo »

rf15 wrote: post #53
tzs wrote: post #28

A little background based on a few articles about this plus my recollection of PBS Space Time videos on this: There are at least two ways to try to figure out the rate of expansion of the universe (which is called the Hubble Constant). • From variations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) which are the result of certain conditions in the early universe it is possible to figure out what the expansion rate should…

This, together with the endless philosophising around dark energy, dark matter and whatnot paints a pretty strong arrow towards our models having some flaws when it comes to their large-scale application. I hope to live long enough to see where we made our mistake and get a better model.

We know for sure that there are issues with our current theories. Our two best theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics, are not compatible with each other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity#Relationshi...

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#66

Post by michaelsbradley »

tzs wrote: post #28

A little background based on a few articles about this plus my recollection of PBS Space Time videos on this: There are at least two ways to try to figure out the rate of expansion of the universe (which is called the Hubble Constant). • From variations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) which are the result of certain conditions in the early universe it is possible to figure out what the expansion rate should…

"Humason assembled spectra of the nebulae and I attempted to estimate distances." So wrote Hubble of his colleague Milton Humason in 1935 by which time spectra had been obtained for over 150 nebulae. Hubble was a stern warner of using the Doppler effect for galaxies and argued against the recessional velocity interpretation of redshift, convincing Robert Millikan, 1923 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics and director of physics at the California Insitute of Technology, that the redshift interpretation as an expanison of the universe was probably wrong, the year before both of their deaths in 1953.

Hubble ended his book Observational Approach to Cosmology[+] with the statement:..."if the recession factor is dropped, if redshifts are not primarily velocity-shifts, the picure is simple and plausible. There is no evidence of expansion and no restriction of time-scale, no trace of spatial curvature, and no limitation of spatial dimensions. Moreover, there is no problem of internebular material. The observable region is thoroughly homogeneous; it is too small a sample to indicate the nature of the universe at large. The univers might even be an expanding model, provide the rate of expansion, which pure theory does not specify, in inappreciable. For that matter, the universe might even be contracting."

[+] https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept04/Hubble/paper.pdf

source: https://plasmauniverse.info/people/contributors.html

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#67

Post by willis936 »

runeb wrote: post #62
arcastroe wrote: post #46

I've asked this question before, but I don't think I received a good answer, so figured I'd try asking again. How do we know that galaxies are accelerating away from us and not moving at constant speed? People often point to the observation that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving away from us, implying acceleration. However, wouldn't we expect to see the same observation even without any…

Their light is more red shifted the farther away they are. I'm no expert on this, but I believe in a constant-speed scenario they would have equal red shift no matter the distance

The assumption made here is that relative velocity is the only method that would redshift light. Gravitational redshift is a thing and our model of gravity is incomplete.

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#68

Post by Veserv »

explaininjs wrote: post #26
orra wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we’ve been using the 13.8 billion cosmological age estimate ever since I started brushing up my layman's understanding of the subject. I remembered the age of the universe as as 13.7 billion years, but I wasn't sure why that was. Well, the initial WMAP results in 2003 supported an age of 13.7 billion years. Later results nudged this upwards to 13.8 billion years. Of course, all the results have error bars.

> Of course, all the results have error bars. Not to mention the underlying philosophical assumptions, such that the "rate of time" has been constant across all of... time. Aka: How do we know a "year" 13 Billion "years" ago bears any resemblance to one now? What would it mean for it not to?

Well for one, if the laws of physics are not time invariant (i.e. the laws of physics are not the same at all points in time) then energy can be created or destroyed [1]. So that would be quite a shocker.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#69

Post by colechristensen »

arcastroe wrote: post #46

I've asked this question before, but I don't think I received a good answer, so figured I'd try asking again. How do we know that galaxies are accelerating away from us and not moving at constant speed? People often point to the observation that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving away from us, implying acceleration. However, wouldn't we expect to see the same observation even without any…

If your idea was the case there would always be new things from very far away heading towards us, this is not the case. If the universe is flat and infinite there would be no end in supply of new galaxies with all velocities and you would always have the same mix as the initial mix of velocities. That’s not what we see.

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#70

Post by snowwrestler »

arcastroe wrote: post #46

I've asked this question before, but I don't think I received a good answer, so figured I'd try asking again. How do we know that galaxies are accelerating away from us and not moving at constant speed? People often point to the observation that the further away a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be moving away from us, implying acceleration. However, wouldn't we expect to see the same observation even without any…

> After long enough time, all objects will appear to be moving away from Earth, even if they were moving towards it initially. And after long enough time, the objects that move fastest should be farthest away, by the simple definition of speed!

Sure, but to argue that this explains what we observe today, you would need to show that as of today it has been “long enough,” which is its own can of worms to open.

You might say “obviously it has been long enough for full sorting, because we observe a fully sorted data set of speed correlated with distance.” But that would be begging the question.

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