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The earliest galaxy so far seen?

Earliest galaxy?

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope now think they have identified a galaxy formed only 330 million years after the Big Bang.

The red smudge in the centre of this image [to the right] is thought to be a galaxy with a redshift of around z=13, as seen by the NIRCam instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. This redshift estimate is based on photometry so the object remains a candidate rather than a confirmed high-redshift galaxy, but if confirmed spectroscopically this would be the highest-redshift galaxy yet observed.

You can read the research paper itself here [pdf]. The galaxy is actually very young, and its nature, along with a second also described by the research, appears to contradict expectations. From the paper’s abstract:

These sources, if confirmed, join GNz11 in defying number density forecasts for luminous galaxies based on Schechter UV luminosity functions, which require a survey area > 10× larger than we have
studied here to find such luminous sources at such high redshifts. They extend evidence from lower redshifts for little or no evolution in the bright end of the UV luminosity function into the cosmic dawn epoch, with implications for just how early these galaxies began forming. This, in turn, suggests that future deep JWST observations may identify relatively bright galaxies to much earlier epochs than might have been anticipated. [emphasis mine]

In other words, this early data from Webb suggests that galaxies formed much faster than expected after the Big Bang. This either means all the theories describing the Bang are wrong, or that it might not have even happened.

Genesis cover

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.

 

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"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

16 comments

  • Cotour

    At some point when technology allows us to see back in time far enough, might we observe an eye staring back at us?

  • pawn

    Oh noes, data that may up-end the badly limping along Big Bang?

    What’s next, dark matter reduced to cosmological wishful thinking?

    Prepare for a great ride over the next decade or so.

    I just hope that early meteoroid strike was a “fluke”.

  • Jeremy, Alabama

    No early-epoch hypothesis survives first contact with observation.

  • pzatchok

    How big is the universe again?

  • David Ross

    Before dismissing the Big Bang, some might instead revive Modified Newton.

  • wayne

    “If the universe is only 14 billion years old, how can it be 92 billion light years wide?”
    Fermilab (2019)
    https://youtu.be/vIJTwYOZrGU
    9:46

  • wayne

    Cotour–

    Alan Parsons Project
    “Some Other Time” (1977)
    https://youtu.be/ECUfp0I0XLs
    4:05

  • Weren’t galaxies closer together right after the Big Bang? If so, why don’t we see any other highly red-shifted galaxy next to this one?

  • Cotour

    THAT LITTLE RED DOT

    “God”, the “Source”, the multidimensional all-knowing and absolute all powerful entity sits at his endlessly expansive 50’s style celestial kitchen table apparently reading the paper, The New York Times! (He loves the 50’s aesthetic, a BIG Elvis fan.)

    He is once again absolutely objectively amazed as he reads saying to himself while shaking his head “Will the NYT’s never learn?”. Its both entertaining and ironic to him. (Yes, he is more of a him than a her, he has got a three-piece set and he knows how to use them, and he uses them often).

    Humanity is ever predictable but ever interesting to him as they struggle to survive, one of his best auto evolving creations ever. And with all due excellent modesty, thinks to himself, “I am good” ;)

    “Humans, they are crazy but always entertaining. They embody all potentials that exist between both good and bad. I have given them the keys to the universe, if only they can ever figure it out. In time, in time, and I have got plenty of that”. He thinks to himself.

    At that very moment he thinks that their appears in the Sources expansive celestial 50’s style kitchen while he entertains himself reading the trash that the New York Times pumps out into the earthly world an infinitesimally small but slowly growing what turns out to be a shiny glowing eye.

    The crafty humans through their technology have acquired the ability to see all the way back to just one millionth of a second before reality began in their universe. And before they can understand exactly what it is that they are observing………….

    At that very microsecond the Source realizes that his most entertaining creation who he bestowed with the greatest potentials and the keys to the universe and the capacity to at some point in the universes timeline to truly understand and *SEE* him in all of his magnificent glory has indeed unexpectedly accessed the keys to the universe and they are at that very micro second beginning to observe him in his house, in his temple, in his privacy. (He is in his celestial underwear!).

    And at that moment, in that microsecond the Source is enraged and feels violated and that the lowly humans have unexpectedly invaded his privacy! And in that microsecond, in that moment of uncontrolled absolute all-encompassing emotion and rage he ends his most promising and entertaining experiment with a thought and it all collapses into a multibillion-degree singularity of absolute bright light and a new experiment in universes begins.

    He is fickle that way and does not like those kinds of surprises. Everything is on his terms and with his permission.

    And as he reflects on his rashness, he hears a distant voice asking him if he took the dog out.

    We all serve someone :)

  • Cotour

    THE NYT’S SEEKS REDEMPTION?

    (And take note, this NYT’s admission closely coincides with the failed Jan 6th TV show produced by the now desperate Democrats attempting to further vilify Trump. And that IMO is what this mia culpa is all about, a credibility reset going into the next political cycle. Credibility NOT!)

    The New York Times, the “Woke”, Liberal, “Progressive” washing machine has released several apologies where their hired “Woke”, Liberal, “Progressive” writers and former journalists (Were they ever journalists?) admit what they got wrong about America and Americans and candidate and president Trump. Trump Russia collusion? Oops, “Sorry”.

    Sky News: https://youtu.be/wpLWhWtKhc4

    What are they looking for? Forgiveness? A reset with the Americans who they have extreme elitist disdain for? Attempting to acquire some credibility which they happily sold or gave away in order to “Fundamentally Change America” and ensure the Democrat party machine and their un and anti-American, Globalist agenda their power?

    The NYT’s is just a hired gun and they shoot, they kill, for the “Woke”, Liberal, “Progressive” agenda (D).

    The facts are that from their beginning the NYT’s has supported much that is un and anti-American, they ran cover for Adolf Hitler and his genocide, they made Communist, Fidel Castro a folk hero. Its a long list.

    A company apparently filled with elitist self-hating antisemitic Liberal now Leftist anti and un–American Globalist Jews.

    You read the NYT’s? You believe they are at the apex of honesty, objectivity and journalism? You love Thomas Freidman?

    Now you know the reality, the NYT’s and their employees are frauds, you have been defrauded and manipulated. And if you continue to believe that the NYT’s is in some manner delivering objective journalism, then YOU are the problem.

    https://apis.mail.aol.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-_95qz8vtNQnj2guvJpSi615JXjYizy9bcZuM2MCqJDk8zBIwKj0CmLH_qmCDE5NsTJVJXmOu9vG5vVhaOWavzw/messages/@.id==AFHeBukLzgx1YtqcWQ5MKCDlRyY/content/parts/@.id==2/thumbnail?appid=AolMailNorrin&downloadWhenThumbnailFails=true&pid=2

  • Andrew M. Winter

    Okay: I have been having a lot of issues understanding the Big Bang idea of late.

    If there was a big bang, and it went “bang” from a single point, how is it that the older the galaxy is that we can see, if farther and farther away from that wondrous “singularity” from which it all supposedly began?

    If we are looking at really really really YOUNG proto-galaxies would they not be clustered closer and closer to where the singularity was when it went “BANG” in the Big Bang?

    Yet each new find of a very very young proto galaxy is always a thing all by itself on the edge of the Universe?

    Like this thing. They say it formed 330,000,000 years ago. Way less than half a billion years after the big bang. But how far away is it? From reading the PDF I can’t see a point where they say how many Millions of Light Years, ( I think that is what MYr means), said galaxy is from the observation point, (earth).

    So according to this:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang, the Big Bang happened 13.8 Billion years ago. But, if that galaxy is more than 14 billion light years away then the time it the light from it took to get to earth is greater that the age of The Big Bang.

    So just how far away is that galaxy? I can’t find that datum in all of this.

    Further, we have absolutely no idea how far away from the point astrophysical location of the Big Bang singularity OUR galaxy is.

    So all of this is amazing of course, but dayam I am conFUSED.

  • Cotour

    Speculation:

    Instead of “Bang”, I think instantaneous Expansion might be a better concept.

    From a point, a singularity this universe expanded instantaneously into a void of nothing.

    (Does every black hole, or a black hole of a certain value result in a singularity of expansion that results in a new universe emerging into another nothing void?)

    It is really all mind bending and human beings may not really be able to perceive and understand it as it actually is. (IMO)

  • Andrew M. Winter: Your confusion and doubts about the Big Bang theory are certainly justified. However, just to clarify, this galaxy did not form “330,000,000 years ago.” According to the present theories and assumptions, it formed 330,000,000 years AFTER the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. Thus, the light we see from it is more than 13.4 billion years old.

  • wayne

    Cotour–
    a black hole singularity is not the ‘same’ as the singularity associated with the big bang.

    Sean Carroll
    The Biggest Ideas in the Universe:
    #6. Spacetime
    https://youtu.be/Cg2tOUTE2F4

    Andrew–
    this might help things conceptually–the “big bang” is an event in Time, not an event in Space.
    Our visible Universe is approximately 13 billion light-years ‘wide’, but it’s physically closer to 90 billion light years, none of which we can ever see.

  • ” . . . but it’s physically closer to 90 billion light years, none of which we can ever see.”

    “I’ve been to the edge. Just looked like more space.”

    Jayne Cobb ‘Serenity’ 2005

    “A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.”

    William James

    Nerd Interlude! I had thought that a Spockism from ST:TOG. It isn’t! There isn’t really anything close. How did that happen?

  • wayne

    Cotour-
    yes– ‘expansion’ is a better way to conceptualize what happened.
    A “bang” implies an explosion into something, and the whole ‘big bang’ thing was derisively applied to the theory.

    Under Einsteinian Relativity, if we play the tape backward, we can assume the Universe was smaller at the start. But because curvature, density, and gravity go to infinity at that point, the equations all break down, so we know that Theory is incomplete. Another problem we encounter, is under Einsteinian Relativity the Universe is infinite in size, and always has been, even at the start.

    Where Did the Big Bang Happen?
    Sabine Hossenfelder (sept. 2021)
    https://youtu.be/3hApcpGJETA
    10:16

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