James Webb may have Broken the Universe

Well, perhaps the big bang was simply a " kilonova ".
I wouldn't know what else to call it.
A once in 100 billion year event when mass gets to a certain point.

I think it just overlaid and destroyed what was already there, and some things "survived" the event.

Just an off the top of my head thought.

I took a cosmology class at the university back in the 80s. Back then it was big bang, pulsating universe, steady state, and another one I can't quite recall, perhaps an open universe. If memory serves, they were saying back then that with a big bang universe that all the matter of the present universe, a universe at that time that seemed endless, was contained in a single point that exploded and expanded as energy that cooled and became mass, eventually to become the universe we have today. Then, if it was pulsating, after eons it would contract into a massive black hole and back to the singularity of another big bang like the one that started our universe.

The theories back then couldn't come up with what conditions could have been like before the big bang, so the pulsating universe seemed the most logical choice. Personally, I think we are way behind the front wave of the big bang that is expanding and breaking the structure of the frozen singularity outside of space/time. If we were riding the wave of the big bang, like a surfer, then our galaxy would have a red shift and seem very old. To anyone outside of the big bang that is just being hit by the front wave, then the big bang looks far away and very small and it is also very old. Our current reality is actually ancient history to the front wave of the big bang IMO.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

Ever think about how to it could end??

Nice podcast/write up at quantamagazine.org

How Will the Universe End?

I knew about the Higg’s field but didn’t know about it changing states/value. And if it can do it once…

Kind of gives you a new reason to fear the LHC!!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

You can think about “what if there was something else here, like gravity, before the Big Bang?” Maybe even, what if two gravity strings crossed and they caused the Big Bang?

I'm wondering how gravity and universe expansion may play a part in the size and maturity of those Webb newly discovered galaxies that are causing the problems of breaking our understanding. That is if what we think of as gravity is really what we think it is.

The mind is a great thing to baste!

2 places mankind will probably (I’d put coin on no) NEVER FIND.
The center of the universe and the edge of the universe.

By man or machine, we will NEVER find either.

















so save some time and $$$$$$$$















stop looking!

a reply to: quintessentone

And add to the mystery is some more observations (data), that contradict other proclamations that this cannot be so… from newatlas.com

Startling new evidence suggests black holes drive expansion of universe.

Basically, some galaxies have supermassive black holes and they don’t retain objects according to their gravitational attraction but seem to be pushing objects away!

Again, this is science and more data means that what we thought was simple and already known is not exactly explained by our limited understanding.

This is great stuff to try to understand even at the armchair level!

Big shocker.
We are cavemen when it comes to the understanding of the universe.
I guarantee you whatever we think we know about the universe is so fundamentally wrong. Hell, over 75% is made of dark matter/dark energy and we don’t even know what it is, how it got there, it’s purpose, or anything.

I believe if we knew and understood the mechanics and reality of the universe our minds couldn’t even begin to understand.

The main problem with the Big Bang theory is that it predicts that the early universe was dense enough to be a black hole and nothing can escape from a black hole…

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Klassified

Our "understanding" of the universe has never been set in stone anyway.

I agree but you have to admit the ages of both our galaxy and the Universe are recited like Gospel by many in the science community.

Not at all, really, since the ages of both have been adjusted many times over the past several decades.

Less than 100 years ago, science generally believed the universe was a steady-state and had no known time of origin. Edwin Hubble first discovered the expansion of the universe in 1929, which told us that the universe is not a static, steady-state place.

Soon after that in the 1930s, and using the idea that the universe is not static and unchanging, there were different scientific theories developed for the finite age of the universe starting at 1.8 Billion years old, then later research increased that to 3.6 billion years. Later theories in the early 1950s further refined that to 5.5 Billion.

in 1958, Alan Sandage determined a value for the the Hubble Constant (the rate of expansion of the visible universe), and he used that value to increase the age of the universe to 20 Billion years.

In the 1960s, the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) was discovered, and that further refined the age to about 18 billion years old. Further studies of the CMB with better instruments in the 2000s and 2010s (such as the WMAP space observatory that launched in 2001) reduced that age to the about 14 Billion years old, and further studies of data from WMAP and new theories about that data currently have it at 13.78 Billion years today.

But that's just our current estimate. Considering how much the age of the universe has been adjusted just in the past few decades due to new discoveries and new research, there is no real reason to for science to think they "finally have it exactly right." Instead they realize that there will still be new discoveries, new theories, and better technologies that will further refine that number in the coming decades, just like it has been refined over the past several decades.

That's how science works. Scientists are constantly trying to advance new theories or revise existing theories to replace the old existing theories to find better and new answers to questions like "how old is the universe."

Assuming the Universe continuously expands might be a mistake. It might pulse, like a heart beat.

Also our main lack of knowledge comes from understanding how gravity works. To our observations gravity seems constant and predictable but what if over longer periods of time it is not. Energy as proven by science cannot be destroyed it can only change state or transfer. The gravity of the sun is constantly pulling on celestial objects in its sphere of influence and will don long after it has run out of fuel for as long as it still has mass. Does that mean that gravity comes with limitless energy (which physics does not allow) or does it mean our understanding and observations of gravity are incorrect. Maybe over a much longer period of time that can be observed by us that gravity runs out of steam. Or maybe gravity is powered by a force outside of the visable dimensions. Who knows all I know is that humans probably know next to nothing.

originally posted by: LeeMich83
Assuming the Universe continuously expands might be a mistake. It might pulse, like a heart beat.

Yes, but science would need to find good evidence for a mechanism behind how it would begin to collapse again before developing a real scientific theory on a regularly pulsing universe.

There is real science being done right now trying to test real hypotheses that describe such a cyclical universe that pulses or bounces between expansion and contraction. However, none of them have yet gained enough traction to be included as part of the standard theory of the birth of our particular universe we see today.

The answer to "what does the standard theory say was here before the big bang" is that the general Big Bang Theory doesn't know. It doesn't really attempt to answer "what was before the Big Bang" but rather just tries to describe the formation of our universe after the big bang itself.

The Big Bang Theory allows for possibility that there was something like another universe before it (maybe even one before that, and before that again, ad infinitum), and some big bang cosmologists and physicists are actively trying to find out.

I was hoping it would detect black hole stars, which would have confirmed the big bang theory. They are stars which would only have existed in the early universe and we wouldn't see them today. Only something like the James Webb would be able to detect them.

youtu.be...

That they found what looks like normal galaxies is really disappointing to me. That they are now jumping through hoops making all these assumptions "well they look like normal galaxies but must be special galaxies made out of special stars because this is the only way they fit our model" doesn't surprise me. They are going to keep bending and distorting their model like a bowl of spaghetti rather than ever admit the model is wrong.

But yeah they found more galaxies instead of early universe stuff. This means the model is wrong.

Is our universe endless? Without beginning, without end? That's what this suggests. There was no big bang.

a reply to: Darkblade71

Like something that happens when a supermassive black hole reaches a certain size? That's certainly a possibility. Nobody can say no. We don't know much about them.

It could be that what we know of as black holes isn't the final stage of stellar formation. If enough of them clump together they could transition into something else - that blows up.

Then you could have an endless universe that randomly blows up every so often. "so often" being potentially hundreds of billions of years.

originally posted by: peskyhumans

They are going to keep bending and distorting their model like a bowl of spaghetti rather than ever admit the model is wrong'''

You say "distort" but isn't changing and adjusting the model to fit new observations a good thing? Isn't that what we want science to do?

Is our universe endless? Without beginning, without end? That's what this suggests. There was no big bang.

As I mentioned in a post above, the standard Big Bang model allows for "existence" to have existed forever. It allows for there to have been universes -- possibly an infinite number of them -- to have existed prior to the Big Bang.

The Big Bang doesn't say nothing at all existed prior to the big bang. The standard model actually doesn't say what, if anything, came before the big bang or what actually banged (although "expand" is a more accurate term than "bang") or what caused it to bang/expand in the first place.

For example, some scientists say that the big bang might have been relatively local event and that there are other parts/bubbles in the greater universe (beyond our observable one) that were not created by it.



I mean, the big bang model generally fits current observations (although adjustments as we mentioned are always being made to fit new observations). A new model that better fits all observations would be a great thing, but we need to come up with that model first and find good evidence for it. Right now the big bang model is the best one we have.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: quintessentone

And add to the mystery is some more observations (data), that contradict other proclamations that this cannot be so… from newatlas.com

Startling new evidence suggests black holes drive expansion of universe.

Basically, some galaxies have supermassive black holes and they don’t retain objects according to their gravitational attraction but seem to be pushing objects away!

Again, this is science and more data means that what we thought was simple and already known is not exactly explained by our limited understanding.

This is great stuff to try to understand even at the armchair level!

From your source:

Contrary to what we might think, a vacuum isn’t totally empty – random quantum fluctuations produce what’s known as vacuum energy, which exerts an outward pressure that could work against gravity and drive the expansion of the universe. In some models, vacuum energy could be found in black holes, and in the new study the team found the first observational evidence of this.

So are we back to: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction?

The statement means that in every interaction, there is a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. The size of the forces on the first object equals the size of the force on the second object. The direction of the force on the first object is opposite to the direction of the force on the second object. Forces always come in pairs - equal and opposite action-reaction force pairs.

www.physicsclassroom.com...

Has my armchair learning gone to far back in time? To a much too simple time?

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Not at all, really, since the ages of both have been adjusted many times over the past several decades.

Pardon me for butting in. I suspect our friend gortex is thinking in terms of a somewhat shorter timeframe -- since the launch of Hubble, say. That event is already 33 years past -- almost half a lifetime -- and estimates for the age of the Universe haven't changed a great deal since then. Here's a 1996 article in the NYT claiming that the age-of-the-universe question is 'settled'.

I am far from expert in these matters but I know a bit of physics, and physical cosmology interests me. On this, we shouldn't kid ourselves: the existence of large, fully formed galaxies so early in the observed history of the Universe is a serious blow to the current family of hypotheses (please note that I say neither 'theories nor 'models') about its emergence and evolution.

Unfortunately, one of the first people to relay this fact to the general public was an electric-universe crackpot, who claimed falsely that the existence of these unexpectedly big and bright early galaxies proves 'the Big Bang didn't happen'. Of course it proves nothing of the sort -- as explained in adequate detail herein.

However, the falsity of Lerner's gleeful attack on orthodoxy should not blind us to the paradigm-shattering importance of this discovery. The scientific community is astir -- both excited and troubled. A few of its members -- we may descibe them as professionally interested parties -- have been pushing back hard against any suggestion that the current cosmological paradigm has been broken.

After months of trying, some of these researchers were able to torture the data to fit current scientific supposition. But I suspect this is a band-aid; it won't stop the bleeding.

Meanwhile, reputable science journalists have been scrambling to undertake damage control among the public. Here's Marina Koren in The Atlantic, explaining how things are gonna be okay. Your post reminded me a bit of her article (that's a compliment, by the way).

We stand on the threshold of an unexpected new era of cosmic mystery. All bets are now officially off, and anyone putting their chips on cosmology-as-usual will lose big. For the time being, I would advise against uncritically accepting the reassurances of the commentariat. As with the mysterious 'shot-down' UFOs that everyone has now agreed to call balloons, they're just whistling in the dark.

An exciting time to be alive, to be sure.

originally posted by: 00018GE
The main problem with the Big Bang theory is that it predicts that the early universe was dense enough to be a black hole and nothing can escape from a black hole…

The latest theory is actually that black holes slowly evaporate.

originally posted by: gortex
Or rather the discovery of 6 "mature" Galaxies by a team of scientists looking at the Webb Deep Field data from last year may have broken our understanding of the Universe , its age and how Galaxies form.

One reason we launched the JWSTelescope is because we didn't have data on such old galaxies, and in some respects, accurate data on them is still lacking. They didn't take actual spectra of the galaxies which we would need to have precise and accurate data, but I expect they eventually will, so that's one thing that could change the results somewhat.

More significantly, there's an assumption used in the analysis that the mass to light ratio we observe locally over 13 billion years after the big bang, will be the same at less than 1 billion years after the big bang, and what if that assumption is incorrect? Well if the mass to light ratio was different back then, it might even be possible to explain the data without much change to our models, we would just need to replace the assumption mass to light ratios are unchanging and frankly that doesn't seem like it was necessarily a good assumption to begin with.

It's not surprising the existing models don't cover the "baby or "toddler" universe that well, since before JWST we lacked data in this early time period of the universe. Dr. Becky, an astronomer on youtube, points out that these types of caveats are spelled out in the paper, so we need more data (like the actual spectra) to see what kind of holes we might have in our models for how the universe formed soon after the big bang. If you don't want to watch the whole video, watch the 2 minute summary where she explains these caveats beginning at time 11:23.

Once again a JWST result has been misunderstood and twisted into something it's not on social media. In this video we're chatting about what astronomers have found, how they found these galaxies, and what that means for our understanding of the Universe.

originally posted by: LeeMich83
The latest theory is actually that black holes slowly evaporate.

Black holes currently grow faster than they evaporate because the very cold universe is still not cold enough to let them evaporate. They will absorb more energy from the low temperature of the universe than they will lose from evaporation for many billions of years. Eventually the universe should cool enough to allow the evaporation, but even then, only the lightest or least massive black holes will evaporate at first. For a black hole to evaporate now, it would need to have a mass less than that of the moon and it's possible no such black hole exists...the black holes we know of have a mass at least 3 times that of the sun or so.

Ask Ethan: Do Black Holes Grow Faster Than They Evaporate?

Every black hole we know of in the Universe today is still growing, but that growth is going to reach a finite maximum. After that, Hawking radiation will triumph...

Black holes will grow and grow and grow for billions of years before they start decaying faster than they're growing, and even once they do, they have incredible lengths of time before they're gone.