Oxygen found in the most distant known galaxy, too soon after the Big Bang
The uncertainty of science: Astronomers studying the most distant galaxy so far discovered, 13.4 billion light years away and existing only 300 million years after the Big Bang, have now detected the existence of oxygen, an element that simply should not have had the time to develop in such a short time span.
The new oxygen detection with ALMA, a telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert, suggests the galaxy is much more chemically mature than expected. “It is like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies,” says Sander Schouws, a PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands, and first author of the Dutch-led study, now accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. “The results show the galaxy has formed very rapidly and is also maturing rapidly, adding to a growing body of evidence that the formation of galaxies happens much faster than was expected.”
Galaxies usually start their lives full of young stars, which are made mostly of light elements like hydrogen and helium. As stars evolve, they create heavier elements like oxygen, which get dispersed through their host galaxy after they die. Researchers had thought that, at 300 million years old, the Universe was still too young to have galaxies ripe with heavy elements. However, the two ALMA studies indicate JADES-GS-z14-0 has about 10 times more heavy elements than expected.
The spectroscopy that confirmed the oxygen also allowed the scientists to confirm the galaxy’s distance, which also confirmed the fact that there is something seriously wrong with the present theories of cosmologists about the formation of the universe. Present theory requires at least several generations of star birth followed by star death, with each forming heavier and heavier atoms. Such a process is expected to take far more than 300 million years.
Either that theory is very wrong, or the theory of the Big Bang has problems. The facts don’t fit the theories, and when that happens, it is the theories that must be abandoned.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The uncertainty of science: Astronomers studying the most distant galaxy so far discovered, 13.4 billion light years away and existing only 300 million years after the Big Bang, have now detected the existence of oxygen, an element that simply should not have had the time to develop in such a short time span.
The new oxygen detection with ALMA, a telescope array in Chile’s Atacama Desert, suggests the galaxy is much more chemically mature than expected. “It is like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies,” says Sander Schouws, a PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory, the Netherlands, and first author of the Dutch-led study, now accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. “The results show the galaxy has formed very rapidly and is also maturing rapidly, adding to a growing body of evidence that the formation of galaxies happens much faster than was expected.”
Galaxies usually start their lives full of young stars, which are made mostly of light elements like hydrogen and helium. As stars evolve, they create heavier elements like oxygen, which get dispersed through their host galaxy after they die. Researchers had thought that, at 300 million years old, the Universe was still too young to have galaxies ripe with heavy elements. However, the two ALMA studies indicate JADES-GS-z14-0 has about 10 times more heavy elements than expected.
The spectroscopy that confirmed the oxygen also allowed the scientists to confirm the galaxy’s distance, which also confirmed the fact that there is something seriously wrong with the present theories of cosmologists about the formation of the universe. Present theory requires at least several generations of star birth followed by star death, with each forming heavier and heavier atoms. Such a process is expected to take far more than 300 million years.
Either that theory is very wrong, or the theory of the Big Bang has problems. The facts don’t fit the theories, and when that happens, it is the theories that must be abandoned.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
These are fun times to be living in regarding cosmology… Galaxy formation… Wrong! Hubble’s constant…. Wrong! Black holes properties….. Wrong!
I’m actually sure the the cosmologists and physicists are also excited… New physics is their dream…. And I’m also looking forward to being proved right that dark matter and dark energy should never have been moved from placeholders to doctrine. It’s always been a dodgy principal to claim to understand anything you can’t see, taste or measure. Go science! ( And leave that budget alone Mr Trump!)
Lee S wrote: “And I’m also looking forward to being proved right that dark matter and dark energy should never have been moved from placeholders to doctrine. It’s always been a dodgy principal to claim to understand anything you can’t see, taste or measure.”
I am as skeptical as Lee S. Dark matter and dark energy are merely hypotheses (although I doubt the educatedness of these guesses, reducing them to assumptions, not hypotheses) that were put in place to explain the unexplained. They are similar to the assumption of aether, in the good old days, to explain the medium through which electromagnetic waves (e.g. light and radio) could propagate, because until a century ago everyone knew that waves must propagate through a medium, otherwise they cannot exist. It turned out that the universe is stranger and more mysterious than anyone had imagined. That was a failure of imagination, which could be the reason so many scientists believe in the undiscovered “dark” forces that they think act on a galactic scale.
I wonder whether the affects of dark matter factor into the attractions of the galaxies, or does visible matter adequately explain their relative accelerations toward each other.
I think I remember reading recently that some cosmologists theorize that the universe is actually twice as old as is currently assumed, and if true, then there would be no need for dark matter and energy to explain the observed universe. Maybe that could also explain the heavy elements found?
I’d love to see Steady State make a comeback
As for the uncertainty of science — and sometimes the authorities just getting things wrong — take a look at the article A Stellar Revolution Turns 100 in the May issue of Sky & Telescope. (Yeah, they publish them considerably ahead of time.)
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-79) was correct in her measurement of the relative abundance of hydrogen and helium as compared to the “metals” in stars, but this result was hotly contested by such authorities as Henry Norris Russell, and she was forced to redact her findings in her groundbreaking doctoral thesis. Now, standing on her shoulders and those of the other giants of her era who figured out where the elements come from and explicated the role of stars in “cooking” them through the end of their journeys along the Main Sequence or otherwise, we are wondering where all of the extra oxygen might come from. (Back when I was a kid, I remember reading both some of CP-G’s popular books and also those by such scientists as George Gamov and Fred Hoyle. It’s amazing how far we have come… and how many questions remain.)
Per the other comments, it is a great time to be engaged in fundamental science, isn’t it.
Never did like the Big Bang. Still don’t.
Check out Mike McCulloch https://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com
Quantum Inertia. Explains a lot.
Mike-
Never did like the Bang myself. Rather fond of the Conformal Cyclic Cosmology theory from Dr. Roger Penrose.
(He dispenses with the problem of entropy quite well, which is not addressed in bang-theory.)
Inflation is made up as well, in my opinion.
“Aeon’s Before the Big Bang”
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
Dr. Roger Penrose
Copernicus Center Lecture 2010
https://youtu.be/4YYWUIxGdl4
1:57:35
this is yet more evidence for timescape theory, which says FLRW errs in assuming a flat space/time and extends relativity into backreactions from local mass
since, as a result, time passes around 30% faster in voids, the photons we receive from distant objects that travel across voids can actually be a bit older than our local universe, so the redshift-calculated age appears impossibly old
the implication is that this Z+14 galaxy is probably quite a bit less young than it appears, perhaps even billions of years old
“The Universe Existed Before the Big Bang”
featuring Roger Penrose et al
https://youtu.be/SbPncSyw-fM
18:59