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Astrophysicists Puzzle over Webb’s New Universe

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Astrophysicists Puzzle over Webb’s New Universe

#61

Post by icegreentea2 »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #8

> Faced with observations of early black holes and galaxies that weren’t expected to exist, scientists have come up with a wealth of new theories to explain them. Now they just need to figure out which ones are true. This subtitle really bothers me. Science isn't about finding out what is true. Science is about finding out what is false and building models to explain the rest. We can never confidently say we know som…

I think it's very fair to say that the mechanics of science is about creating and selecting ever more predictive models that explain observations. So that's the how and what.

But what about the why? Why do we seek ever more predictive models? Obviously more predictive models allow us to just... do more and better things. And I think it's fair to say that that's enough justification in itself. But is there no substance behind the idea that we seek ever more predictive models because we believe it to be a (perhaps the only) systemic way towards "the truth"?

Put in other words, do you actually believe that there is no room for truth in science? Just concurrence and agreement with observation?

I guess I'm just nitpicking on your use of the phrase "science is about". I do agree that perhaps a better subtitle (without needing to reach for contortions in language) would be "which ones are more true".

Re: Astrophysicists Puzzle over Webb’s New Universe

#63

Post by hyperman1 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #58
hyperman1 wrote: post #48

There was a time where Hawking's A brief history of time gave a decent overview of the universe to beginners. Does anyone know how well it holds up today and if anything better exists?

There was never a time when a book gave the public an overview of the universe. ABHOT was so popular for being a book no one actually read, theres even an index named after Hawking due to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_Index Did _you_ read that book? There however definitely was a piece of media that captured public minds and educated them about the cosmos. And that was the show Cosmos. The original of cou…

I did read the book, and know enough people who did. Now I may have weird interests, but that describes basically half the inhabitants of this site.

BTW, as non-USAian, I never saw Cosmos and never heard of NDT.

Re: Astrophysicists Puzzle over Webb’s New Universe

#64

Post by on_the_train »

ramraj07 wrote: post #58
hyperman1 wrote: post #48

There was a time where Hawking's A brief history of time gave a decent overview of the universe to beginners. Does anyone know how well it holds up today and if anything better exists?

There was never a time when a book gave the public an overview of the universe. ABHOT was so popular for being a book no one actually read, theres even an index named after Hawking due to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_Index Did _you_ read that book? There however definitely was a piece of media that captured public minds and educated them about the cosmos. And that was the show Cosmos. The original of cou…

Interesting. I've been gifted that book at just the right time in my life as a teenager. It captured me. I read it the to end many times. Not understanding everything or course. But it created a spark which laid the groundwork for my entire career.

I've never seen cosmos.

Re: Astrophysicists Puzzle over Webb’s New Universe

#65

Post by nzeid »

> Recent ideas suggest that little red dots could be black holes cocooned in thick gas, possibly representing a completely new type of object called a black hole star, in which the tight shroud of gas emits light like a stellar atmosphere.

Just be sure to name the members of Soundgarden on the paper.

Re: Astrophysicists Puzzle over Webb’s New Universe

#66

Post by nobodyandproud »

api wrote: post #26
tigerlily wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a good long look at the CMB picture, including the caption. It basically says the Universe was one big hot apparently uniform ball at one stage. I don't know what conditions were like before that stage, but like Eric Idle says, nothing can come from nothing. Dark energy is a horse shit name for a theory that was horse shit to begin with. The Universe is probably just inhomogeneous, like your intuition is sayin…

“Dark” matter and energy are placeholder names. “Dark” means “we don’t know” which either means we can’t see or detect it or there is an alternate explanation for the effect. It’s like a comment in your code like \\ TODO… I don’t see why that’s that hard, or why we’d expect to instantly be able to figure everything out.

I think the problem is that it wasn’t just used merely as a placeholder, but to hard shutdown any discussions—often started by lay persons—about possibilities that didn’t involve brand new particle physics.

I still recall how neutrinos and black holes “couldn’t” be candidates.

To physicists, this means stellar neutrinos and blackholes (and galaxy centers). To lay persons, any category such as cold neutrinos or primordial black holes also qualify.

The sheer amount of vitriol and—I can’t think of a better term than this—“smugness” was off putting.

Before the internet, this was fine when locked away in their labs and classes; but I don’t think you understand the scale of damage neurodivergent scientists and its fans have done to the science community once they started to participate directly.

Re: Astrophysicists Puzzle over Webb’s New Universe

#67

Post by coliveira »

ramraj07 wrote: post #58
hyperman1 wrote: post #48

There was a time where Hawking's A brief history of time gave a decent overview of the universe to beginners. Does anyone know how well it holds up today and if anything better exists?

There was never a time when a book gave the public an overview of the universe. ABHOT was so popular for being a book no one actually read, theres even an index named after Hawking due to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_Index Did _you_ read that book? There however definitely was a piece of media that captured public minds and educated them about the cosmos. And that was the show Cosmos. The original of cou…

I did read it and I'm sure a whole generation of people also did, it is a very clear and readable book. Don't underestimate or minimize the impact of Hawking's book when it was released.

Re: Astrophysicists Puzzle over Webb’s New Universe

#68

Post by tgarrett »

6thbit wrote: post #15

That’s a beautiful article showcasing our predicament in having access to more information about the universe. Now i have to be the one to ask the dumb defensive question: what makes us so certain that we can trust what we see on James Webb? Can we definitely discard a measurement problem?

If you're worried about bad pixels or noise, it seems like there is an easy fix: point it in a direction specified by some angles theta & phi, wait long enough to accumulate light from distant faint objects (high redshift galaxies etc), then shift Webb's orientation by a small amount to theta+delta_1 & phi+delta_2, which will have a significant overlap with the original image, and after taking the 2nd image check to make sure that all the objects have shifted over together by the same amount...

Re: Astrophysicists Puzzle over Webb’s New Universe

#69

Post by The_Blade »

ramraj07 wrote: post #58
hyperman1 wrote: post #48

There was a time where Hawking's A brief history of time gave a decent overview of the universe to beginners. Does anyone know how well it holds up today and if anything better exists?

There was never a time when a book gave the public an overview of the universe. ABHOT was so popular for being a book no one actually read, theres even an index named after Hawking due to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_Index Did _you_ read that book? There however definitely was a piece of media that captured public minds and educated them about the cosmos. And that was the show Cosmos. The original of cou…

i will never forget learning about Eratosthenes when i was very young and should have been playing Excitebike or something
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