Ok I’ve been meaning to ask this in the Space community or the NoStupidQuestions community. I’ve seen this news circling around the past 2 weeks and have been watching videos of people talking about it.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I think the gist is that astronomers discovered with the JWST that some galaxies at the end of the observable universe appear to be younger than they are supposed to be. So it kinda blows a hole in the big bang expansion where objects farther away should be older. And that somehow ties in with the theory that our universe is inside a blackhole.
It’s fascinating but I don’t know what to do with that information other than just be fascinated. I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson who said “So what does this new discovery matter to us? Nothing”, because us being in a blackhole doesn’t change anything in the grand universal scheme of things.
From what I’ve seen, it’s not that they’re “young” galaxies, but that they shouldn’t have had enough time to develop if the universe were truly so crazily homogenous from the big bang. It doesn’t necessarily disprove the big bang, just means the universe might not be as “smooth” as previous assumptions.
Any scientist worth their salt should be readily able to admit it was always an assumption, just one that proved congruent with observations until now.
I’ve always liked this theory, imagining the cosmos is just a series/web/tree of black holes draining into the next. Everything gets recycled eventually.
It doesn’t answer where it all came from. Whatever theory or religion you choose, there’s no answer to this question apart from it suddenly appeared which implies something can be created out of nothing and that creates a whole lot of new questions and possibilities.
It’s also just whitehole theory which is possible but we’ve never seen one and we likely should have by now.
the network of causality is like a big river, and if you follow individual lines, they either lead in circles or they stretch infinitely into the past and future or they spring out somewhere spontaneously
only in the third case is there a “spontaneous creation”
Another big part of it is that if the big bang happened evenly then galaxies and other objects should be spinning in random directions. So far that’s not what’s been observed. There seems to be a preferred direction everything spins in.
That fact wasn’t as cromulent as they made it out to be.
ETA: also, the myth about birds exploding by eating rice. An entire generation used bubbles at their weddings instead, in part because Lisa didn’t fact-check a myth. (Not complaining about the result though: bubbles are lovely floating orbs of happiness, whereas thrown rice is a messy waste of food.)
The bird myth predates the Simpsons though. I did hear it was greatly spread by all the churches\wedding venues because they all didn’t want to keep cleaning up all the rice.
For sure, Lisa doesn’t tend to make up such ideas whole-cloth. It was just the first place I heard the myth and I remember kids at school spreading it after that episode. So it definitely spread the idea.
We also have to remember that we can only see a bounded sphere of the universe from our frame of reference.
If we were to move our observation points to elsewhere in the universe, we’ll be able to see more of the universe and challenge our current theories.
The JSWT sees only what it can, and our theories about the universe can only extend as far as that evidence. Those galaxies might appear to be younger, but the science is never finished!
Nah, that would require spacetime to curve a lot more than it does. It’d also have to curve in the other direction (local spacetime is hyperbolic, “local” as in basically all of the observable universe). Calculations show the universe must be several times larger than the observable universe (I forgot the exact numbers, but iirc it’s in the single digits or low teens) in order to match even Hubble observations, let alone JWST observations.
IMO, it’s likely that the universe just isn’t as homogenous as assumed, or maybe that certain geometries that span across spacetime or movement of the galaxies simply make us think the galaxies are further away than they actually are, or both.
There is little to no reason to doubt the measurements within the galaxy, as that’s not far enough for any presence of dark matter to really skew things, nor does dark energy have a marked effect within areas of enough mass, like within galaxies. Though yeah there is some wiggle room on further measurements, hence the recent news furthering the idea that our galaxy sits in a less dense region. We’ve had evidence for probably multiple decades, but nothing is certain until it’s proved in several unquestionably accurate ways.
That’s not an empirical observation nor a new discovery though. It just an analogy that leans on the definition of Schwarzschild Radius. No one is seriously implying, that we’re somehow trapped in the very center of a black hole with the Hubble limit as the event horizon equidistant around us.
In fact, the analogy only holds, if the Hubble parameter is not constant and this new result, if it holds up, would still indicate, that it is not constant. As was expected by the standard model of cosmology. If the Hubble constant is decreasing, and consensus is that it does, than the Hubble radius is also different from an event horizon in the following way: light reaching us from more than 5 billion years ago comes from regions that have always been receding from us at speeds faster than light.
Ok I’ve been meaning to ask this in the Space community or the NoStupidQuestions community. I’ve seen this news circling around the past 2 weeks and have been watching videos of people talking about it.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I think the gist is that astronomers discovered with the JWST that some galaxies at the end of the observable universe appear to be younger than they are supposed to be. So it kinda blows a hole in the big bang expansion where objects farther away should be older. And that somehow ties in with the theory that our universe is inside a blackhole.
It’s fascinating but I don’t know what to do with that information other than just be fascinated. I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson who said “So what does this new discovery matter to us? Nothing”, because us being in a blackhole doesn’t change anything in the grand universal scheme of things.
From what I’ve seen, it’s not that they’re “young” galaxies, but that they shouldn’t have had enough time to develop if the universe were truly so crazily homogenous from the big bang. It doesn’t necessarily disprove the big bang, just means the universe might not be as “smooth” as previous assumptions.
Any scientist worth their salt should be readily able to admit it was always an assumption, just one that proved congruent with observations until now.
I’ve always liked this theory, imagining the cosmos is just a series/web/tree of black holes draining into the next. Everything gets recycled eventually.
It meshes well with my occasional feeling that reality is just circling the drain.
Clockwise or counterclockwise?
I gave it some thought and got vertigo. I’m going with counterclockwise.
I think it depends if you’re in Australia.
note that we’re all circling the sun but still not getting closer an inch per year
actually, we are inside the dream of someone else, and that one too is again in a dream …
Am I a man dreaming I’m a butterfly?
It doesn’t answer where it all came from. Whatever theory or religion you choose, there’s no answer to this question apart from it suddenly appeared which implies something can be created out of nothing and that creates a whole lot of new questions and possibilities.
It’s also just whitehole theory which is possible but we’ve never seen one and we likely should have by now.
All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls. But the Greater Will made a mistake.
the network of causality is like a big river, and if you follow individual lines, they either lead in circles or they stretch infinitely into the past and future or they spring out somewhere spontaneously
only in the third case is there a “spontaneous creation”
Another big part of it is that if the big bang happened evenly then galaxies and other objects should be spinning in random directions. So far that’s not what’s been observed. There seems to be a preferred direction everything spins in.
The direction the black hole “toilet” flushes as it sucks stuff in and smashes it against each other?
Maybe there’s a parallel universe called Astraliastra where the black hole flushes the other direction!
It’s amazing to me that an episode of the Simpsons like 30 years ago created such a widely believed completely made up fact.
That fact wasn’t as cromulent as they made it out to be.
ETA: also, the myth about birds exploding by eating rice. An entire generation used bubbles at their weddings instead, in part because Lisa didn’t fact-check a myth. (Not complaining about the result though: bubbles are lovely floating orbs of happiness, whereas thrown rice is a messy waste of food.)
The bird myth predates the Simpsons though. I did hear it was greatly spread by all the churches\wedding venues because they all didn’t want to keep cleaning up all the rice.
For sure, Lisa doesn’t tend to make up such ideas whole-cloth. It was just the first place I heard the myth and I remember kids at school spreading it after that episode. So it definitely spread the idea.
I’m sorry but i think that’s just not true?
Inside the solar system, yes, planets more or less spin around the same axis than the whole solar system does.
But the axis of the solar system and of the whole milky way are like 63° towards each other. Source So, not the same direction at all.
I don’t think they meant everything literally goes in the same direction, but more like what is discussed here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-inside-a-black-hole/ (this article was shared elsewhere in this post)
We also have to remember that we can only see a bounded sphere of the universe from our frame of reference.
If we were to move our observation points to elsewhere in the universe, we’ll be able to see more of the universe and challenge our current theories.
The JSWT sees only what it can, and our theories about the universe can only extend as far as that evidence. Those galaxies might appear to be younger, but the science is never finished!
Probably goes without saying
Maybe the far away galaxies are just the close galaxies seen from the other side?
Nah, that would require spacetime to curve a lot more than it does. It’d also have to curve in the other direction (local spacetime is hyperbolic, “local” as in basically all of the observable universe). Calculations show the universe must be several times larger than the observable universe (I forgot the exact numbers, but iirc it’s in the single digits or low teens) in order to match even Hubble observations, let alone JWST observations.
IMO, it’s likely that the universe just isn’t as homogenous as assumed, or maybe that certain geometries that span across spacetime or movement of the galaxies simply make us think the galaxies are further away than they actually are, or both.
I was joking. Unless it was genius of course.
I seem to remember that the science isn’t totally settled on the distance to stars in our own galaxy so I am quite chill about cosmology.
There is little to no reason to doubt the measurements within the galaxy, as that’s not far enough for any presence of dark matter to really skew things, nor does dark energy have a marked effect within areas of enough mass, like within galaxies. Though yeah there is some wiggle room on further measurements, hence the recent news furthering the idea that our galaxy sits in a less dense region. We’ve had evidence for probably multiple decades, but nothing is certain until it’s proved in several unquestionably accurate ways.
The Hubble radius of the universe is also equal to its Schwarzschild radius, which is a requirement for any “we’re inside a black hole” theory.
That’s not an empirical observation nor a new discovery though. It just an analogy that leans on the definition of Schwarzschild Radius. No one is seriously implying, that we’re somehow trapped in the very center of a black hole with the Hubble limit as the event horizon equidistant around us.
In fact, the analogy only holds, if the Hubble parameter is not constant and this new result, if it holds up, would still indicate, that it is not constant. As was expected by the standard model of cosmology. If the Hubble constant is decreasing, and consensus is that it does, than the Hubble radius is also different from an event horizon in the following way: light reaching us from more than 5 billion years ago comes from regions that have always been receding from us at speeds faster than light.