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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

#351
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By few billion are you talking like 3 billion? Why the change?

Meaning, why did the expansion change from decelerating to accelerating a few billion years ago? Because that was when the density of matter, which had dominated the dynamics until then, became smaller than the density of dark energy, which has dominated the dynamics since then. The dark energy density doe not change with time, but the density of matter decreases as the universe expands.

Thanks, that's helpful to understand it. What does "a few" mean in this context?

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that he worked on it at least. Around the same era, someone else calculated the circumference of the earth (and that it was round) in a pretty accurate fashion (between −2.4% and +0.8% off) based on measuring shadows on equally sized posts at different locations on the same date. Googled, it was Eratosthenes, the cities were Alexandria and Syene/Assuan.

One of my favourite episodes of Cosmos centres around Eratosthenes’ calculation of the circumference of the Earth: https://youtu.be/G8cbIWMv0rI?si=CuX49ki1GIvBLpeL

How did they take measurements in two different cities at the same time without clocks?

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#353
post #183

The article mentions the cosmic distance ladder, which is one of my favorite things in all of science. How do we know how far away the really far stuff is? It's non-trivial and I find the history fascinating. It all started with knowing the distance from the earth to the sun. Nobody had a clue until Richer and Cassini got within 10% in 1672. Then we nailed it down in 1769 with James Cook's voyage to Tahiti, the prima…

Great comment! Maybe you can help me with a book recommendation? I was recently looking for a book which was basically your comment, but more in depth and covered the last couple thousand years. I wanted a to read about the history of astronomy - yknow, what was the state of the art in, say, 1350 or whatever. If you know of anything, I’d be super interested!

Cosmos by Carl Sagan covers similar stories including the history of astronomy and the mathematics invented to explain it - it is like a whistle stop tour of these subjects and more + ties them together conceptually.

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#354
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t believe it. First they take Pluto from us, next they’re going to tell me the static on my tv set isn’t the remnants of the Big Bang, but just hot dust? My childhood is crumbling!

Your comment made me realize how some younger people have no idea of, or at least no first-hand experience of static on TV and radio since it is all digital nowadays.

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#355
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaning, why did the expansion change from decelerating to accelerating a few billion years ago? Because that was when the density of matter, which had dominated the dynamics until then, became smaller than the density of dark energy, which has dominated the dynamics since then. The dark energy density doe not change with time, but the density of matter decreases as the universe expands.

Thanks, that's helpful to understand it. What does "a few" mean in this context?

Cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_factor_%28cosmology%29

> 9.8G years: dark-energy-dominated era

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my favourite episodes of Cosmos centres around Eratosthenes’ calculation of the circumference of the Earth: https://youtu.be/G8cbIWMv0rI?si=CuX49ki1GIvBLpeL

How did they take measurements in two different cities at the same time without clocks?

IIRC they walked directly north and measured at midday.

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we observed some of the galaxies moving away from us at rates faster than speed of light, multiple times faster, which wouldn't work with objects drifting away if we hold by that speed of light is max speed matter can move at.

The speed of light, or C, is the max speed information can move through our 3d space. Having objects moving away from us at a speed greater than C, isn't weird. The observable universe is a 3d subspace of a higher dimensional object. A good analogy is a balloon, where there's a 2d subspace on a 3d object that's being inflated. Even if you can only move at a certain velocity, the balloon can inflate such that the 2d s…

I've wondered: Do we know that the balloon has always been inflating at the same rate? Do we know if the dimples on the balloon expand as fast as the rest of it? Do the areas around the dimples expand faster?

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now run the numbers Why don't you do that, and share the results here? > I would want to see it done Why don't you do it yourself?

Im not a physicist. I am not selling a theory that needs to answer to a simple challenge. Cosmologists are, it is their responsibility. Moreover, if I did, it would be a huge waste of time because dollars to doughnuts I get gatekept and no one believes me, and, if anything it could make challenging the CMB worse because this model gets filed away as "that one crackpot throwawaymaths idea don't listen to it". Back whe…

True; people with any sort of expertise will be less generous with their attention if it's clear that you won't make an effort to understand what it is you're challenging.

Additionally, is it really you that's mounting a challenge? Quoting you: "There's a 'fringe' theory ... the primary proponent ... if my understanding is correct it would still be compatible with ..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39674424>.

So,

> crackpot throwawaymaths idea

it is not really your idea, is it?

I see you as taking the position that you're entitled to require me to make efforts to assist you. I also note that what I did volunteer upthread, you rejected as "muddling the point". Fine. I think we've evaporated each other's conversational good will. Bye bye.

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#359

The article mentions the cosmic distance ladder, which is one of my favorite things in all of science. How do we know how far away the really far stuff is? It's non-trivial and I find the history fascinating. It all started with knowing the distance from the earth to the sun. Nobody had a clue until Richer and Cassini got within 10% in 1672. Then we nailed it down in 1769 with James Cook's voyage to Tahiti, the prima…

> Nobody had a clue In the 3rd century BC, Aristarchus calculated that the Sun was between 18 and 20 times farther away from the Earth than the Moon, and proposed the Heliocentric model as a result. The true value is instead approximately 400 times. But it's incredible given that he didn't have lenses, the value of Pi, and that the Geocentric model was considered correct until 1800 years after his death. https://en.w…

He almost certainly knew that it was closer to 400x, but could not believe it, or did not think others would believe it. Given the size of the Earth (which he knew), that would have made the distance to and the size of the Sun something hard to stomach.

Re: Webb and Hubble confirm Universe's expansion rate

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed of light, or C, is the max speed information can move through our 3d space. Having objects moving away from us at a speed greater than C, isn't weird. The observable universe is a 3d subspace of a higher dimensional object. A good analogy is a balloon, where there's a 2d subspace on a 3d object that's being inflated. Even if you can only move at a certain velocity, the balloon can inflate such that the 2d s…

I've wondered: Do we know that the balloon has always been inflating at the same rate? Do we know if the dimples on the balloon expand as fast as the rest of it? Do the areas around the dimples expand faster?

I'll get to your questions below. If you want any of the preliminaries or the non-tl;dr answers explained a bit more simply, say so in a reply and I'll do my best in response.

Your questions (if you pardon the expression) poke holes in the balloon analogy. The latex or other stretchy balloon material is denser and under less tension around dimples. Local experiments by a (spatially) 2d observer could determine these features experimentally, and is likely to determine that there is a shear force that is not confined to its 2d "world". The 2d observer could in principle also do geometry and discover the amount of large-scale positive spatial curvature of its "world"; when we do that at cosmological scales we find flat or even slightly negative spatial curvature. The 2d observer could also discover the gravitation of our world: put a drop of water somewhere on the surface of an inflated ballon, and that drop will tend to roll downwards. We haven't found anything like that.

Humanity has looked for forces that give even the slightest evidence in favour of extra spatial dimensions, but there is no experimental evidence that favours having more than our familiar three. We've also looked at many many ways in which space could be some sort of medium comparable to the balloon latex, and practically none of them has survived contact with experiment (and those that survive are mostly hard to analogize with stretchy latex, even when entropic forces -- those are why you can scrunch or inflate a balloon and when you release the scrunching-pressure or internal air pressure the balloon relaxes to pretty much its original shape -- are relevant gravitationally).

> Do we know if dimples on the balloon expand as fast as the rest of it

tl;dr: yes: the material of galaxy clusters collapses gravitationally; galaxy clusters expand away from each other.

The scale of cosmology is such that galaxies are considered so small that you can treat the entire collection as a set of fluids or a dust that dilutes with the expansion of the universe. The part of any given galaxy that's mostly protons is a mere "dust mote" that floats in free-fall. And the entire dust expands, we don't capture local gravitational collapse.

However, physical cosmologists can also take gravitational collapse into account, for instance to study structure formation ("why are there filaments of galaxies"?). Typically we would take the cosmological expanding spacetime and embed within it "vacuoles" which are collapsing spacetimes, i.e., where the dusts tend to concentrate to a single point over cosmological times. These would typically represent a galaxy cluster. We have some mathematical techniques to figure out what happens at a "junction" between the collapsing spacetime and the expanding spacetime, and the junction is usually at the point where the influence of the collapsing mass is very small. This approach accords well with a lot of observations of how radiation leaves galaxy clusters, and how matter might fall into galaxy clusters from "the great beyond" represented by the expanding matter fluids. It also lets us use much more complicated models of matter ("enriched chemistry" is the jargon) within the vacuole while ignoring it in the mostly-diffuse-hydrogen extragalactic space, which is useful for figuring out how galaxies assemble and how their first stars ignite.

> Do we know if the dimples on the ballon expand as fast as the rest of it?

> Do the areas around the dimples expand faster?

tl;dr: (1) yes, we know, and are improving accuracy and precision (2) space expands between clusters of galaxies, and matter out there dilutes away; matter within clusters of galaxies tends to concentrate into stars, black holes, and the like, so the behaviour is really opposite.

The "areas around the dimples" are analogous to the expanding cosmological spacetime. The dimples themselves are analogous to a gravitationally bound galaxy cluster, best represented with a collapsing spacetime. So, it's practically a question of the sign of the expansion changing near galaxy clusters, rather than the magnitude.

> Do we know that the balloon has always been inflating at the same rate?

We know it hasn't been.

The universe's expansion history isn't uniform. For illustrative purposes there are two interesting "eras", while I'll take in reverse:

The dark matter dominated area, which we are in, has an relatively quick expansion rate, which appears to be getting quicker. This is captured for most practical purposes by the cosmological constant, although we're looking for more complicated representations of the increase of the rate of expansion during this era.

The matter dominated era, which ended about 4 billion years ago, had a relatively slower expansion because the universe's matter was dense enough to overwhelm the acceleration of the expansion.

The ESA article linked at the top is essentially about improving our understanding of the expansion of the universe in these two eras.

The Cosmic Microwave Background formed fairly early in the matter dominated era, then there's a gap of a few hundred million years before we get stars and galaxies. That gap is the "dark ages". We have very little data about the expansion history during the "dark ages", but good data from after them and good data from before them. The early and late data imply slightly different things about the expansion history of the universe, and that presents everyone with an interesting puzzle with lots of ways it might be solved.

One possible solution was, "The Hubble space telescope (HST) data was wrong or misleading because of the instrument's history or what part of the spectrum it looks at". That solution (like similar ones) now seems much less likely since the JWST (newer, not known to have ever broken down or been in need of repairs, sensitive to longer wavelengths than HST, and farther away from Earth) data supports the HST results.

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