The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 56 Comments

A recent discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) confirmed that luminous, very red objects previously detected in the early universe challenge established ideas about the origins and evolution of galaxies and their supermassive black holes.

Led by researchers from Penn State and utilizing the NIRSpec instrument on JWST as part of the RUBIES survey, the international team identified three enigmatic objects dating back to 600-800 million years after the Big Bang, a time when the universe was just 5% of its current age. They announced the discovery on June 27 in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The scientists analyzed spectral measurements, or intensity of different wavelengths of light emitted from the objects. Their analysis found signatures of “old” stars, hundreds of millions of years old, far older than expected in a young universe.

56 Replies to “The Sound Of Settled Science”

  2. Scientists see something new, and realize their previous WAGs are wrong, propose new WAGs!

    Media dutifully reports, vaccinated and masked population dutifully marvels at the wisdom of scientists.

    Welcome to the future.

    1. Galtry
      That’s how science is supposed to work, religion is a closed loop of BS.

  3. In some science fiction book that I read many, many, many moons ago there was a theory of the universe that has always stuck with me – there wasn’t a single Big Bang that created the universe, there were previous Big Bangs.

    IIRC, it used the energy is neither created nor destroyed idea and then linked it to black holes being the driver of Big Bangs. Basically, black holes continuously expand, consuming everything around them. Then black holes themselves converge into massive black holes until they compress a massive amount energy into a relatively small space. Eventually, that energy is released…a big bang, repeating in an endless cycle of expansion and contraction.

    Science fiction but I found the idea interesting.

  4. There was no “Big Bang”. The universe is like a 4 or more dimensional Klein Bottle lava lamp and the only part of it we see is a snapshot of light arriving from its depths. To us, it appears that the oldest light would emanate from a point, but rather that origin being a one-time event it is just the re-energising of the cooled stuff causing a continuous “Bang”. How? Ask God. 😉

  5. All models are wrong.
    Some models are useful.
    The best models are useful to explain, clarify and predict events and/or observations.
    The worst models are used to promote an agenda or propagandize, and you can tell one from the other pretty easily with just a little bit of training.

    1. How many FAILed models did Newton construct before he “discovered” gravity? How many government Grants did he receive before he got it right? How many things did he successfully get banned … to prevent things from falling on innocent heads?

      Sure good that we’ve developed far more sophisticated models since those bad old days.

      1. Newtonian mechanics: Good model.
        QFT: Good model.
        General relativity: Good model.
        Lambda-CDM: Good model.
        Evolution: Good model.
        Standard Model of particle physics: Good model.
        They have all predicted observations many, many times.

        Creationism: Bad model.
        Climate change: Bad model.
        Peak oil: Bad model.
        Abiotic oil: Bad model.
        Electric universe: Bad model.
        Flat earth: Bad model.
        None of these has been used to make predictions that were later born out by experiment, and rather use any observations that don’t fit the good models as somehow being evidence that the bad models are “true”, which is not how science works.

        1. Evolution has a model? Who knew. Species adaption? Excellent model. Evolution? Uh … seems to be missing a few parts.

          1. No-one is f0rcing anyone to like the model.
            No-one says anyone has believe it, either.
            To deny that it has actual scientific and explanatory use is denial of reality, and that is another thing people are free to do.
            Lastly, what separates us from animals, the way we are modeled in His image, is the very ability to generate good models.
            If your reason for disliking a model is because it conflicts with some other model you hold dear, well, that ain’t science.

          2. Yet you say a model must be reproducible and repeatable to be valid ? I’m not denying science … I’m denying BAD science. Bad models. Incomplete models.

          3. All models are incomplete.
            Evolution has many experiments which are reproducible.
            In the theory of evolution, one type of experiment is a dig, a search through fossil records.
            Another is exposing an organism to environmental stresses, to cause it to speciate, ie to form a reproductively isolated population.
            Both sorts have been done many times.

          5. Newton’s model does not work with very high masses or very high orbital speeds approaching c.

        2. Natural selection and adaptation is the creationist model. It’s been around since before Darwin and inserting gobsmak gigilian years into that model as evolutionists do does nothing but provide pretext to deny natural selection.

          Edward Blythe had natural selection right and Darwin just aped him with a different spin.

          See people saying there isn’t ‘enough time’s for humans to have diverged. They’re evolutionists using evolution to deny the practical reality of natural selection.

          Abiotic oil is a good model but impolitic. If you had any sense for seeing through political agendas you’d see that easily. Biogenic methane sure, biogenic octane? What a joke.

          Otoh general relativity has underwhelming predictions to its name, and none of them are as unique as relativity nuts make them out to be. It’s also way more politicized than most people realize.

          1. So, I guess you think biogenic coal is BS too?
            GR made predictions that were born out by observations.
            No observation has ever been made which contradicts it.
            You are essentially a flat-earther.

          2. I’d have to see the predictions you think so highly of. GR proofs are for the kind of person who looks at a broken clock and concludes they discovered time travel.

            That’s how it is when dealing with the Berneys/Freud/Einstein trifecta. It’s fine propaganda that’s great at putting on airs of intelligence but it takes just a bit of clear thinking to make a joke of it. Slow light alone falsified the idea that light is the same speed in any frame of reference.

            As for flat earthers, they’re like the evolutionists. Predictions basically post hoc, the pattern was known before the theory, then the theorists predicted something everyone knew about anyway and claimed it was proof. I’ve seen how the digs go. Nonconforming finds are usually discarded entirely, or logged as nonconformities as disregarded as data points. If it doesn’t fit the millions of years model and the local professors ideas it’s out. Test data is treated the same.

            GR has similar problems. I didn’t say it didn’t have predictions, I said the predictions are underwhelming. The were known discrepancies in the gravitation theory regarding light. Relitivists observed the pattern in those discrepancies, gave the numbers for them, and put relitivity in as the reason for the fudge factor. They could have called it whatever the hell they wanted once they had the fudge factor calculated.

            Tip of the camels nose is how that kind of pseudoscience works. I recalced mercury by 10% ergo space literally bends and irrational time nonsense is proven.

            Otoh I didn’t say a damn thing about biogenic coal and coal is sufficiently different from oil that it’s another topic. You’re need to slide the topic just indicates the weakness of your positions.

    2. “you can tell one from the other pretty easily with just a little bit of training.”

      Yes, but I think people have lost trust in modeling because in too many areas of science the models are set up as gospel that cannot be questioned or challenged, even by those with training and expertise. The observations and data are manipulated to fit the model instead of the model being altered to fit observations.

      This isn’t new in science, btw, the history of science has numerous examples of scientists and scientific organizations refusing to let go of inaccurate models. The most famous being the model of the earth centered solar system. A complicated system of epicycles was used to maintain the flawed model. But this also happens in enviromental, disease and dietary science. Why ? Because scientists and scientific organizations who built their reputation and careers based on flawed models fight tooth and nail against alternative models.

      Ego and self interest often trumps the scientific method. Which leads to Max Planck’s Principal that boils down to “Science progresses one funeral at a time”.

      1. That people have lost trust in models in general is just another facet of the Marxist attack on the west.
        Some African tribes have a model explaining the phases of the moon as a god slowly devouring and then regurgitation the moon. Its what I would call a “bad model.”
        Good models>bad model>no model.
        The “no model” view is basically post-modern Marxist-style philosophy applied to science, and it is very pervasive in modern society, you will see it here frequently.

        1. I’m not sure that path forward to increase trust in science or modeling is to insult people. People know bullshit when they smell it, even if they can not articulate what exactly is going on. Scientists saying “you idiots just don’t understand the nuance and subtle differences in the flavor and odor of bullshit as our sophisticated palate” probably won’t restore credibility to modeling or science. Science just needs to clean up their bullshit.

          1. When my car won’t start, and some guy says its the flux capacitor, or that I need to put water in the gas tank, I can insult him, as he obviously knows sweet fa about how a car works.
            When someone who opines on Lambda-CDM, or whatever, and then indicates that he doesn’t even understand the model, I can insult them too, as they too obviously know fa about it, and yet continue to shoot their mouths off as if they do.
            Its got nothing to do with “nuance and subtle differences” as you, in your own ignorance, put it.
            Science is doing fine, muddling along as it always has, the people who don’t know science from a hole in the ground are the problem, just because Al Gore or some other ahole calls something “science.”
            Many obviously believe those charlatans at least enough to believe that their BS actually constitutes “science.”

          2. We’ll have to agree to disagree. Good luck with your chosen approach to influence people. I’m sure it will be incredibly successful…but, just in case, be open to other models of communication.

          3. I’m not trying to influence people.
            People can believe whatever BS they like, and I can call them fools for doing so if I like, and I do. In fact, I think mollycoddling fools is a bad idea, much better to call them out on their foolishness. Mollycoddling fools is half of what’s gotten us into the dire straights that the west now finds itself in.

          4. Now booking my new Irish folk act, Molly Coddling and the Fools, for appropriate ethnic venues, events, etc.

  6. These are some interesting concepts put forth here. I wonder if humankind will ever know for sure. Or personkind, sorry.

    1. People don’t “know” what’s happening when they burn a candle or fill a tire with air.
      We have models, like the kinetic-molecular theory, which adequately explains much of what happens when you fill a tire, and quantum electrodynamics, which adequately explains much of what’s happening when a candle burns.
      The model we have for the universe which best explains observations is called the Lambda-CDM model.
      You will find that the people on this site and many others who don’t “believe” the model don’t even understand it in the first place, and are ignorant of the fact that a model doesn’t exist to be “believed”, but rather exists to explain observations and to predict future observations.

      1. Any model that’s using cold dark matter is wrong, for the same reason epicycles were wrong. Dark matter is a fudge factor to explain away the difference between observation and prediction. “It isn’t our model of how gravity works at the galactic scale that’s wrong, oh no, it must be the universe that’s wrong”.

        1. LOL.
          Gravitational lensing.
          Look it up.
          Feel free to try to make a better model, until then Lambda-CDM it is.

          1. Actually I do have a better model, but it’s going to take me years to do all the math. My model doesn’t need dark matter or dark energy at all, and is compatible with QCD.

  7. more proof that we dont know anything. just guess work, followed by more guess work if the prior one is wrong.

    1. Yeah. You’re just guessing that when you light up a candle, light will come out of it, and just guessing that when you write something at home, other people can see it here.
      Just guessing that when you shine a laser thermometer at something, it’ll tell you how hot it is.
      Just guessing that when you throw a ball to someone, that it’ll describe an arc in the air.
      Keerist, but this site is so full of scientific illiterates its unreal.

      1. Scientific illiterates like Richard Feynman?

        It’s all guesses, at first. Then you set up experiments to try to prove the guess wrong, and decide whether the guess matched the observation. If it doesn’t match, the guess is wrong and you make a new guess.

        1. Not so.
          For physics, Newton may have been guessing, but since then, all work has sat on Newtonian dynamics as a foundation.
          QED was based on relativity and quantum mechanics. Combining the two gave rise to gauge symmetry, it is a natural consequence of QM and relativity, it is now a cornerstone of QFT and the Standard Model. Gauge symmetry was not just “a guess”.
          You are basically applying critical theory to science.

    2. If I build a mathematical model of launching a warhead from my house to land within a warhead’s distance of your house, how much are you willing to bet that my model is just guess work?

  9. I wonder what the “very red objects” are. Stars, etc? and their age would indicate that maybe our understanding of the universes age is not right? Unless our technique of measuring these objects is flawed or off. Maybe?

    I guess until we get out there( go Musk) the answer to life the universe and everything will still be 42.

    1. They are galaxies, to the best of our knowledge. The observations don’t conflict with current estimates of the age of the universe.
      We cannot go there, not even in principle, to the best of our knowledge.

    2. It isn’t that the presumed age is wrong per se. Instead there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what time is. There isn’t some master clock that measures the whole universe. All time is local. It progresses slower close to mass (down to zero in a black hole) and faster far from mass (such as in the great voids). Even if it all started at the same instant, the whole universe beginning at the same moment, parts of the universe are much older than other parts because time doesn’t progress at the same rate everywhere.

      1. Not so.
        If a black hole forms at time t=x at a large distance from the black hole, at time t=x + 10 years at a large distance from the BH, you can say that it’s 10 years old, despite the fact that locally almost no time has passed at the horizon. You are just trying to obfuscate things with misleading semantics.

        Currently, our best models have the universe at about 13.8 billion years old.
        Just because poorer models suggest otherwise doesn’t change that fact.

        1. How far do you want to go from that black hole? How about in the middle of the Böotes void? That 10 years as measured from within a galaxy is more like 40 years when measured from the void. As measured from there, the universe is 56 billion years old. And if you measure from a primordial black hole, the universe is only a few seconds old.

          1. BS.
            The difference, as far as the curvature of spacetime is concerned, between the center of the Bootes void and say, some random place in the solar system is nowhere near enough to make even a 0.001% difference in the the clocks.

  10. “I wonder what the “very red objects” are. Stars, etc? and their age would indicate that maybe our understanding of the universes age is not right?”

    What is puzzling is that the very red objects (young galaxies/proto-galaxies) do not.
    It is objects within the the very red objects (stars/black holes) that appear to be unusually old for such a young galaxy.

    It’s something like finding a 6th grade classroom, only some of the students appear to be 30 to 40 years old instead of 11 to 12.

    1. Now how does any of the the stuff you guys rolled around here on this threat improve or worsen my life? My observation, not one damn bit.

      1. Well, you are using the internet, and if you ever use GPS, or an ATM, then both quantum electrodynamics and general relativity are making some pretty big impacts on your life.

        1. ‘nowhere near enough to make even a 0.001% difference in the the clocks.’

          But GPS is proof of relitivity because clock recalculation.

          You’re on team propaganda you are.

          Yeah, well…
          Newtonians can do GPS too.

          1. Nope. Can’t do GPS without using the exact numerical clock corrections predicted by GR.
            Newtonian mechanics does not include clock corrections.
            You are a bald-faced liar.

          2. “You’re on team propaganda you are.”

            Sure. Physics propaganda, doing the bidding of the Illuminati and the Lizard People since before Newton!
            Muhahahahaaa!

  12. Don’t forget the words never quite spoken by Albert Einstein:

    “Space-Time is not just curved; it’s BENT.

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