[HN Gopher] Webb telescope spots super old, massive galaxies
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Webb telescope spots super old, massive galaxies
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 100 points
Date : 2023-02-22 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.colorado.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.colorado.edu)
| mabbo wrote:
| I need to temper my excitement. What Webb is seeing is some red
| dots. We didn't expect to see those red dots (not so red, not so
| big, etc) but they're there.
|
| One interpretation is that these are older (more red shifted),
| larger (more stars) galaxies. But that's just one explanation. A
| pretty good one, but still, it could also be something totally
| mundane and boring. Remember FTL neutrinos?
|
| I'll be ecstatic if the existing model of the universe needs a
| massive update based on this new data. But it's important to
| search as hard as we can for answers that aren't the one we
| really want to see.
| shazeubaa wrote:
| What if the universe was much older?
| mgsouth wrote:
| Well youngsters, let me tell you. When I was your age _gravity
| was faster_. Now I don 't mean stuff fell faster. Not a bit. It
| was just that everybody got on with the business at hand.
| Something pulled on you and you fell down. None of this shilly-
| shallying we got nowadays. Back then, a whole solar system
| would collapse down in a week, 10 days tops. But then all the
| baryons decided we needed "organization" and "processes". Every
| few billion years some bright spark would come up with a sure-
| fire way to "avoid all the chaos". So everybody would spend a
| million years arguing about what was now the best way to fall
| down. Meanwhile all the dark matter would mill around in
| confusion, going to meeting after meeting and not getting
| anything done, before finally giving up and just stop any
| interaction. 'Cept for gravity, of course. There's always
| gravity. It's just slower now.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Low probability, as in 10^-43%: we know pretty much the story
| that happened after the first 10^-43 seconds [1], and we know
| the universe became transparent after circa 300,000 years post
| Big Bang. The oldest known galaxy was GN-z11, ~400 _milion_
| years post Big Bang, by JWST the oldest is JADES-GS-z13-0, ~325
| million years post Big Bang.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_early_universe...
| jfengel wrote:
| Then we'd have a different set of observations that conflict.
| We know the age of the universe from several different
| directions: the rate at which distant galaxies move, the
| temperature of the cosmic microwave background, the temperature
| of white dwarfs, etc.
|
| These agree to within a relatively small range. If the number
| were substantially different, it would imply that something
| deeply fundamental (and probably several deeply fundamental
| things) was wrong.
|
| It's much more likely that our understanding of galaxy
| formation is wrong. That's much less fundamental, and much
| harder to observe.
|
| It's just like debugging code. You start with the obvious
| stuff. It's much more likely that the error is in your program,
| for example, and not in the compiler. That's not proof, but
| you'd be foolish to start anywhere else.
| sqeaky wrote:
| I see a few possible takeaways from this. Maybe, these results
| are weird and might be in error somehow. Maybe, these results are
| more data that we have big gaps in our understanding of
| cosmology. Maybe massive headlines should be double checked.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Maybe they're looking so far back in time they're just looking
| forward in time.
|
| Infinitely recursive reality.
| bmitc wrote:
| I admit that I was damned surprised that the JWT launched and
| deployed correctly, but I am glad it did. It's helping usher in a
| new wave of data, and helping to remind people that science is as
| much finding out how you're wrong as it is finding out if you're
| right. Once LISA comes on board, we'll have nice new toys to
| explore the past with.
|
| > that shouldn't exist
|
| Articles should be more careful. It isn't that much longer to say
| "that aren't predicted by current models".
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| the comma in the title made me read that as headlinese "Webb
| telescope['s] spots [are] super old, [also, there are] galaxies
| that shouldn't exist"
| scrozier wrote:
| HN reader spots extraneous, comma that shouldn't exist in the
| headline :-)
| dang wrote:
| Fixed, now.
| dheera wrote:
| Another HN reader spots extraneous "b" that shouldn't exist in
| Web's name
| jmharvey wrote:
| The extra B is for BYOBB.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The more b's the better
| doodlesdev wrote:
| Original title had "massive" as an adjective to galaxies which
| explains the comma, HN sometimes removes these "superlative"
| words from the title creating this kind of nonsense.
| ruuda wrote:
| Hah, but galaxies are one of the few things where "massive"
| in the original sense of the word is appropriate. The article
| is about galaxies that are more massive than expected.
| tough wrote:
| The bots wouldn't know
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| Hands down my least favorite feature of Hacker News. Maybe
| I'd change my mind if it wasn't on and I had to endure all of
| the clickbaity and superlative ridden headlines but right now
| I feel like the confusion this creates is much more annoying
| than the nasty original headlines it is protecting us from.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Doesn't the filter only apply when you first submit? Can't
| you edit the headline back to how it was after the
| submission posts if it gets it wrong?
| kuroguro wrote:
| You can, that's correct.
| [deleted]
| yogaBear wrote:
| [dead]
| criddell wrote:
| I've always wondered why headlines are limited to 80 chars
| but comment lines on wide screens aren't wrapped until >
| 200 characters.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think it's overall a good feature, but I'd prefer that it
| were voluntary. Have HN show you the original headline and
| the proposed modifications, and let the submitter adjust as
| necessary.
| samwillis wrote:
| HN also has a relatively short character limit in titles, I
| often find myself deleting superlative words in order to make
| it fit.
|
| Although in this case it looks like the automated modding of
| the title.
| ars wrote:
| We need a new look at cosmological redshift. It bugs me
| tremendously because it violates conservation of basically
| everything (energy, momentum, angular momentum).
|
| I find the entire thing extremely unphysical because of that. Why
| should just this one thing violate that? Just photons, nothing
| else? Are gravitational waves also stretched? Why can't we
| duplicate the effect in a lab?
| blatant303 wrote:
| Physical and Mathematical Consistency of the Janus Cosmological
| Mode (Jean-Pierre Petit, Gilles D'Agostini, and Nathalie Debergh)
|
| > in 2008 and 2009, Hossenfelder in [17] and [18] builds her own
| bimetric model involving negative mass, from a Lagrangian
| derivation where she produces a system of two coupled field
| equations. [...] Actually, although sharing many similarities,
| having the same kind of coupled field equations regarding
| negative mass, a fundamental difference remains between
| Hossenfelder's bimetric theory and the Janus Cosmological Model.
|
| > Indeed, Hossenfelder doubts that the second entity can have an
| important effect on the distribution of standard matter,
| qualifying the gravitational coupling between the two species as
| "extremely weak". This is because "for symmetry reason" she
| considers that the absolute values of the mass density of the two
| populations should be of the same order of magnitude. Such
| hypothesis leads to a global zero field configuration, which does
| not fit with observations, as she notices. Then, examination of
| possible fluctuations seems to be her main concern. Not
| perceiving that a profound dissymmetry is on the contrary the key
| to the interpretation of many phenomena, including the
| acceleration of the cosmic expansion, she will not develop her
| model further during the following decade, focusing instead on
| other research topics.
|
| > Nonetheless, Hossenfelder points out a "smoking gun signal"
| that could highlight the existence of invisible negative mass in
| the universe, through the detection of diffracted light rays
| caused by diverging lensing, an effect previously predicted in
| [13]. We indeed showed from 1995 that photons emitted by high
| redshift galaxies (z > 7) are diffracted by the presence of
| invisible conglomerates of negative mass on their path. This
| reduces the apparent magnitude of such galaxies, making them
| appear as dwarf, which is consistent with observations.
|
| > Another feature of the scenario becomes clear from the pre-
| viously discussed example of the Schwarzschild metric. If there
| was a localized source of negative energy, it would act as a
| gravitational lens - but unlike usual matter this would be a
| diverging lens since it would repel our (usual) photons. Such a
| lensing event would typically lower the luminosity of the source,
| an effect that could potentially add up over distance if the
| distribution of such sources is substantial. The detection of a
| diffractive lensing event could serve as a smoking gun signal for
| the here proposed scenario.
|
| Source: http://www.ptep-online.com/2019/PP-56-09.PDF
|
| --
|
| A Bi-Metric Theory with Exchange Symmetry (Sabine Hossenfelder)
|
| > Another feature of the scenario becomes clear from the
| previously discussed example of the Schwarzschild metric. If
| there was a localized source of negative energy, it would act as
| a gravitational lens - but unlike usual matter this would be a
| diverging lens since it would repel our (usual) photons. Such a
| lensing event would typically lower the luminosity of the source,
| an effect that could potentially add up over distance if the
| distribution of such sources is substantial. The detection of a
| diffractive lensing event could serve as a smoking gun signal for
| the here proposed scenario.
|
| Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.2838.pdf
|
| --
|
| On the concept of apparent mass in two-sided/bi-metric universes:
|
| https://januscosmologicalmodel.com/negativemass#conjugatecur...
|
| --
|
| From last week's thread about black holes without a singularity:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34817326
| stirbot wrote:
| (assuming our model of the universe is correct and complete)
| rickstanley wrote:
| We should sanction these galaxies!
| detourdog wrote:
| Yes, I thought the words "shouldn't exist" is the wrong term
| for this phenomenon.
| nawgz wrote:
| Isn't it pretty clear it means "shouldn't exist [under
| current models]"?
| jl6 wrote:
| It's careless language which positions scientific theories
| as normative rather than descriptive. This makes refinement
| look like failure ("Science told us things that turned out
| to be wrong!"), when actually refining theories is progress
| that should be celebrated.
| danuker wrote:
| The wording definitely intrigued me, and I understood the
| implied "given current models". I think sparking
| curiosity is more important than catering to someone who
| is not the target audience of a university news article.
| nawgz wrote:
| That's a lot of damage for two words!
|
| Can you suggest an equally terse title that would avoid
| problems such as "position[ing] scientific theories as
| normative rather than descriptive" and "mak[ing]
| refinement look like failure"?
|
| I think you're assigning far too much wrongdoing to this
| perceived sleight here, I wouldn't even think that saying
| "our current understanding makes this look impossible" is
| a way of saying we shouldn't celebrate change and
| improved understanding, I would instead go the opposite
| way and think how interesting it is to find things
| outside our understanding
| detourdog wrote:
| is there an accepted current model?
|
| To me it implies that the model has more weight than the
| universe.
|
| I think it demonstrates a sloppy framing of the topic.
| beebeepka wrote:
| No, no. The model is pretty accurate. Just add more dark stuff
| and stir until it matches our expectations!
| CuteDinosaur wrote:
| It is good to think about, maybe the dark stuff are the cause
| of these "early" galaxies.
| nblgbg wrote:
| That means bing bang happened long back and some our
| theories are wrong ! May be there is no dark matter !
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Without endorsing this particular conjecture, it's encouraging
| that JWST is generating so much interesting data so soon and
| leading to lots of theoretical re-evaluation. Astronomy and HEP
| may seem pretty abstract and pointless to non-nerds, but
| techniques developed for the collection and analysis of such vast
| datasets find their way back into more quotidian applications.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Every time a new expensive instrument like this is proposed,
| someone asks: "what will it find?"
|
| We don't know.
|
| _That's point of building it!_
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You need to bear in mind that some people _do not care_ about
| knowledge for its own sake, only that which can be
| instrumentalized. So their response to the discovery of new
| cosmic facts is not that they 're cool but 'what does that
| have to do with me?' To them, it's just nerds geeking out
| over stuff for its own sake instead of solving useful
| problems like ending hunger or making better consumer
| appliances or the like. You could think of it as a sort of
| techno-myopia.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Not sure if the pictures on the article are from the telescope
| but the first thing that came to mind was QR codes.
| ViscountOfKent wrote:
| Wow...way to shame the JWST for having old spots colorado.edu
| SaintSeiya84 wrote:
| Because the universe did not originated in a Big Bang, that's
| just a theory that is becoming more and more disproved. The
| universe is infinite and eternal, in constant change? sure, but
| in no way it started 13500 million years ago.
| klyrs wrote:
| I like to think that the Big Bang is the ultimate Great Filter.
| When civilization gets too advanced, they start building
| galaxy-sized colliders and smash charged supermassive black
| holes together to see what makes 'em tick...
|
| But as a non-physicist I recognize that my "theories" are just
| for funsies and have less value than bellybutton lint.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| This is similar to the plot of Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder.
| Fantastic book.
|
| > Twenty-thousand years in the future, Cass, a humanoid
| physicist from Earth, travels to an orbital station in the
| vicinity of the star Mimosa, and begins a series of
| experiments to test the extremities of the fictitious
| Sarumpaet rules - a set of fundamental equations in "Quantum
| Graph Theory", which holds that physical existence is a
| manifestation of complex constructions of mathematical
| graphs. However, the experiments unexpectedly create a bubble
| of something more stable than ordinary vacuum, dubbed "novo-
| vacuum", that expands outward at half the speed of light as
| ordinary vacuum collapses to this new state at the border,
| hinting at more general laws beyond the Sarumpaet rules. The
| local population is forced to flee to ever more distant star
| systems to escape the steadily approaching border, but since
| the expansion never slows, it is just a matter of time before
| the novo-vacuum encompasses any given region within the Local
| Group.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schild's_Ladder
| leepowers wrote:
| The Big Bounce[1] hypothesis is a model that "suggests that we
| could be living at any point in an infinite sequence of
| universes". So while our current universe may not be infinite
| there may be some yet undiscovered infinite/eternal natural
| process that gives rise to universes.
|
| Olber's Paradox[2] and the inability to reconcile it with our
| current astronomical observations seems to disprove that our
| current universe is itself infinite.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27_paradox
| bottled_poe wrote:
| Space dust over intergalactic distances seems sufficient to
| explain Olbers's Paradox?
| bottled_poe wrote:
| Actually, probably just the standard expanding universe +
| light horizon.
| aw1621107 wrote:
| Strictly speaking, Olber's Paradox is about an infinite,
| eternal/static, and homogeneous universe with an infinite
| number of stars; in such a case, the light the dust absorbs
| would cause the dust itself to start emitting light, which
| would make it visible [0]. I'm not sure to what extent this
| paradox applies outside that scenario (e.g., an infinite-
| but-changing universe)
|
| [0]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-the-
| night-...
| coliveira wrote:
| In fact it makes little sense to talk about time before the big
| bang, because inside a singularity time moves infinitely slow.
| So the point is that, yes, the universe never really started
| because time didn't exist before the singularity. The universe
| only evolved to a different dimension, so to speak, and time as
| we know started to exist when the big bang occurred.
| fpoling wrote:
| The question about existence of time before singularity does
| not have an answer, rather than affirmative no.
|
| A singularity means that all timelines goes through it, but
| it is impossible to make continues extension of the timelines
| past the singularity in the current physical models. That
| literally means that anything is possible with the timeline
| prior that. The timeline can jump, be replaced by a set of
| random points, became a multidimensional surface, go back
| etc. It may even indeed disappear, but we do not know.
| spiderice wrote:
| > 13500 million
|
| Why word it like this instead of using 13.5 billion? Is this a
| common thing to do in astronomy? Or are you trying to make the
| claim of 13.5 billion years sounds more ridiculous? Genuine
| question.
| g___ wrote:
| Probably because million is unambiguous. Billion sometimes
| refers to 10^12 rather than 10^9.
| pengaru wrote:
| That's just, like, your opinion, man...
| simonh wrote:
| Some thing can't become more disproved, either it's disproved
| or it isn't.
|
| The timeline is certainly up for grabs, there are uncertainties
| in the various ways we measure or infer distances and the age
| of objects, but so far nothing that invalidates the overall
| scheme. Roger Penrose's idea of conformal cyclic cosmology is a
| plausible alternative, but even that still has an event in our
| past that looks an awful lot like a big bang. There are just
| too many observations any alternative theory needs to explain,
| like galactic red shift and the cosmic background radiation. If
| stars are infinitely old, how come they still have any hydrogen
| left?
|
| It's always a good idea to keep an open mind though. What are
| the alternatives you think have legs?
| [deleted]
| petsfed wrote:
| Do you have any citations for any of what you just said?
|
| Also, the Big Bang "theory" is a theory in the technical sense,
| in that the overwhelming majority of evidence ever collected is
| at least neutral towards the Big Bang, to say nothing of the
| virtually incontrovertible evidence in support (esp. the cosmic
| microwave background radiation, redshift correlated with
| distance to virtually all extra-galactic objects, low
| metalicity in ultra-distant (read early) objects, etc etc etc).
| It could still be wrong, but we'd need some other theory that
| adequately explains all the available evidence, and makes
| several new, testable predictions that are also observed to be
| correct. The term "theory" is not used colloquially here as a
| fancy way to say "guess" or "idea" (those are, in the same
| technical sense, best called "conjectures" or (generously)
| "hypotheses"). It has a very narrow meaning here, and
| dismissing the Big Bang theory as "just" a theory really
| reveals your ignorance on the subject here.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| At the risk of engaging in a thread started by a likely
| troll: the Big Bang hypothesis has a few inconsistencies. For
| example, different distance candles disagree on the Hubble
| constant. Now JWST is finding unusually old galaxies. Etc...
|
| I still lean towards the Big Bang as the most likely model,
| but it's not as well established as, say, germ theory.
| petsfed wrote:
| Granted. And those inconsistencies are not new.
|
| I actually had an idea in undergrad (20+ years ago) to
| probe Hubble Constant variation using quasar reverberation
| mapping and very-long-baseline-interferometry. Then the
| professor I was working with pointed out that the baseline
| I needed was something like 100,000 times earth's orbital
| diameter.
|
| Back then, one of the sexier ideas was that the universe
| might have locally different fundamental constants, and
| that variation could reveal some information about the
| higher-dimensional "space" that the universe existed inside
| of. I've been out of that field for a long time though, so
| I've no idea what the cutting edge is. I just know that the
| Big Bang theory is still pretty safe.
|
| There are plenty of things wrong in the theory, but none of
| the evidence suggests that "expansion from a singularity"
| is wrong, let alone "infinite and eternal" is right.
| kokanee wrote:
| This is fairly sensationalized, I think. "The researchers still
| need more data to confirm that these galaxies are as large, and
| date as far back in time, as they appear... 'Another possibility
| is that these things are a different kind of weird object, such
| as faint quasars'."
| kuu wrote:
| "such as faint quasars, which would be just as interesting"
|
| If you're going to quote, I would suggest to do it fully.
| geuis wrote:
| And quasars are, if I remember correctly, just galaxies whose
| central black holes are ingesting large amounts of gas. The
| accretion disks that form in orbit are simply massive and form
| giant light years long jets that shoot out from both poles.
| Active galactic nucleus.
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