Distant galaxy is too large to support big bang hypothesis

So what they're saying is:

The image we see of the galaxy is what it looked like 13 billion years ago? Since it says that "It represents an era when the universe was only 800 million years old." This is amazing. The light has travelled for 13 billion years, that's like 95% of our universe's existance. So that galaxy was there when our universe was only 800 million years old as opposed to its 14 billion years of age today.

VERY interesting. It's hard to believe that such a huge galaxy existed 13 billion years ago. Since it stopped growing immidiately, it's been that way for 14 billion years now O_O

Thanks a lot for sharing. I'm so damn amazed, I can hardly imagine how HUGE our universe is.

[edit on 9-6-2007 by ZikhaN]

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
It's amazing that this story hasn't popped up before. Yet, they say that there is no conspiracy in science. Hmmmm...

[edit on 8-6-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

Just because they found something new it doesn't mean that other theories are conspiracies lol

Scientists are always finding things to open and close new theories and offer different viewpoints, people usually accept that as the way it is. No one who knows what they're talking about would claim the big bang theory as a fact anyway. So don't get so smug when something like this comes up lol it's just interesting research, not a conspiracy.

Originally posted by ZikhaN
So what they're saying is:

The image we see of the galaxy is what it looked like 13 billion years ago? Since it says that "It represents an era when the universe was only 800 million years old." This is amazing.

Yeah it is quite amazing. If that's what it looked like 13 billion years ago, imagine what it could be like now! There could be life or anything!

Originally posted by malganis
Yeah it is quite amazing. If that's what it looked like 13 billion years ago, imagine what it could be like now! There could be life or anything!

Lets say that it is in fact light that's traveled for 13 billion years. This was a mature galaxy at the time, and yet it's relatively early in the Universe's existence . Is this even supportable by the BBT? Also, where must the galaxy be now if that's where it was 13 Billion years ago.

No one's been able to adequately explain to me how 13 Billion years is an accurate estimate. If we take the current assumption that the universe is accelerating and expanding, then we need to ask how fast light travels. And, that if the universe is really expanding, does the light traveling in it stretch to continue it's journey? Can we then say that light is traveling faster than it's supposed to, and therefore the galaxy isn't really that far away?

Maybe I'm just way over-complicating this, I don't know. All that I do know is that it seems funny that they can finitely state the age of something based on how far light has traveled, when so many things can skew that assessment. Just my thoughts.

TheBorg

Originally posted by TheBorg
No one's been able to adequately explain to me how 13 Billion years is an accurate estimate. If we take the current assumption that the universe is accelerating and expanding, then we need to ask how fast light travels. And, that if the universe is really expanding, does the light traveling in it stretch to continue it's journey? Can we then say that light is traveling faster than it's supposed to, and therefore the galaxy isn't really that far away?
TheBorg

Hi Borg,

No other than Albert Einstein asked your questions, so you're in good company. The Big Bang theory ultimately rests upon Einstein's special and general theories of relatively, especially the parts concerning the finiteness and constancy of the speed of light. Since these theories have been able to explain many other natural phenomena other than the big bang, they are generally considered robust theories, and so their conclusions about the nature of the speed of light are generally accepted by cosmologists and other scientists interested in these issues.

That's not to say that at some later time, another Einstein won't come along with a different, even more revolutionary understanding of light and will turn all this discussion on its head. But for right now, relativity, in confirming the basic structure of the big bang, is the best theory we have for what we observe in the universe. Is it the only theoretical model we could spin? No. I'm sure all of us here could spin a lot of different conjectures about why the galaxies seem to be moving the way they are. But, a theory that can answer many different questions about many different natural phenomena will tend to be pushed to the forefront since it has an explanatory power that goes beyond post-hoc theory creation. In that since, scientifically speaking, relativity and the big bang is where we stand today.

Originally posted by TheBorg

Originally posted by malganis
Yeah it is quite amazing. If that's what it looked like 13 billion years ago, imagine what it could be like now! There could be life or anything!

Lets say that it is in fact light that's traveled for 13 billion years. This was a mature galaxy at the time, and yet it's relatively early in the Universe's existence . Is this even supportable by the BBT? Also, where must the galaxy be now if that's where it was 13 Billion years ago.

No one's been able to adequately explain to me how 13 Billion years is an accurate estimate. If we take the current assumption that the universe is accelerating and expanding, then we need to ask how fast light travels. And, that if the universe is really expanding, does the light traveling in it stretch to continue it's journey? Can we then say that light is traveling faster than it's supposed to, and therefore the galaxy isn't really that far away?

Maybe I'm just way over-complicating this, I don't know. All that I do know is that it seems funny that they can finitely state the age of something based on how far light has traveled, when so many things can skew that assessment. Just my thoughts.

That's an interesting question. But I think the answer is pretty simple. We simply can't get a 100% accurate measurment, no matter how much we'd like to. Atleast not until we know how quickly our universe is expanding so we can start pulling out some statistics of how it all works. Light years is our most accurate measure of distant "objects". Since it's a proven fact that our universe is expanding, there isn't really much we can do to precisize our measurements 100%. I mean, all we can get is a "rough" measurment.

Can we then say that light is traveling faster than it's supposed to, and therefore the galaxy isn't really that far away?

Well I wouldn't say that. Normally that's what you'd assume, but I think that even though our universe is expanding, it won't make a huge impact on the speed of light travel. I mean, we're talking about amazing speeds here, and our universe most certainly can't be expanding anywhere near that rate. So like I said before, we'll end up with the "rough" measurements.

Originally posted by ZikhaN

VERY interesting. It's hard to believe that such a huge galaxy existed 13 billion years ago. Since it stopped growing immidiately, it's been that way for 14 billion years now O_O

Actually, we don't know WHAT it looks like now, because light takes so long to get from there to here (13 billion years, in fact.)

Originally posted by Byrd
Actually, we don't know WHAT it looks like now, because light takes so long to get from there to here (13 billion years, in fact.)

Yeah but the article says that it bulked up quickly within the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang and formed 8 times the mass of our galaxy, and then suddenly just stopped. So it's probably been that way for 14 billion years now.

But you're right though, you can never know for sure;P

[edit on 9-6-2007 by ZikhaN]

i recall this observation of a couple years back...

the scientists will either dismiss the evidence as being an error,
or else the density/luminosity of the pretty reliable guestimate of the age
@ 13 billion LY (and within 800K years of Big-Bang ) is in error...

to fit the accepted model, they may chalk the unorthodox find
as a product of gravitational lensing or some such anomaly.

or else the shape of the universe is more like the classic
potato chip configuration than the expanding balloon models generally used...i was always i favor of the potato-chip profile........because
from a equatorial front view of that type of universe,
the view would present a shape that would closely resemble a figure '8' layting on it's side...noW that that symbol, is used to represent the idea 'Infinity'......how appropos !

[edit on 9-6-2007 by St Udio]

Originally posted by ZikhaN

Originally posted by Byrd
Actually, we don't know WHAT it looks like now, because light takes so long to get from there to here (13 billion years, in fact.)

Yeah but the article says that it bulked up quickly within the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang and formed 8 times the mass of our galaxy, and then suddenly just stopped. So it's probably been that way for 14 billion years now.

But you're right though, you can never know for sure;P

[edit on 9-6-2007 by ZikhaN]

That would be incorrect. The pictures are a few hours of exposures stacked together, you cant possibly tell if anything has stopped forming. In fact its just not possible anyway. The universe is constantly evolving, in the near future our galaxy will collide with Andromeda, that sort of stuff is happening all the time all over the universe.

Im pretty sure that in 14 billion years that galaxy will look quit different than the picture we have today.

Originally posted by Edn
That would be incorrect. The pictures are a few hours of exposures stacked together, you cant possibly tell if anything has stopped forming. In fact its just not possible anyway. The universe is constantly evolving, in the near future our galaxy will collide with Andromeda, that sort of stuff is happening all the time all over the universe.

Im pretty sure that in 14 billion years that galaxy will look quit different than the picture we have today.

Did you notice how I wrote "You're right though, you can never know for sure".

You're wrong in a way too though. By "our universe is constantly evolving" you probably mean that it's expanding, right? Even if our universe is expanding, it won't change the mass of the galaxy. It will still contain the same mass.

I have to agree with most of the post's here on the fact that science isn't exact on matters of speculation of logical assessments. Though we do have a major variable tot he conclusion with the theory of relativity and the speed of light presented by Mr. Einstien, there are no conclusive evidences to support a single probality of exactness.

There are undoubtedly times when astronomers, physicists and cosmologists are gripped by the feelings of awe and amazement that were expressed by Shakespeare's Hamlet on seeing his father's ghost. Over the last century, the frontiers of the known universe have been pushed outwards, our scientific understanding of the underlying physical laws has been revolutionised, and the constant development of telescopes and instrumentation has produced a wealth of new observations and fresh theoretical challenges.

www.wsws.org...

Which is exactly whats happening in the fields of explorations in and visuals of our ever questionable Universe 'til this very day.
Great thread and wonderful pondering query, non-the less

Originally posted by blue bird
Oops! Huge Distant Galaxy Actually Small and Close

Seems pretty convenient to me. So much for infallible science then, eh?

[edit on 11-6-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth

Originally posted by blue bird
Oops! Huge Distant Galaxy Actually Small and Close

Seems pretty convenient to me.

So much for infallible science then, eh?

[edit on 11-6-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

Who ever said science was infallible?

What this galaxy means as pertains to the big bang is that it banged earlier than we thought. Bit whup.