The uncertainty of science as proven by the Webb Space Telescope
A long detailed article was released today at Space.com, describing the many contradictions in the data coming back from the Webb Space Telescope that seriously challenge all the theories of cosmologists about the nature of the universe as well as its beginning in a single Big Bang.
The article is definitely worth reading, but be warned that it treats science as a certainty that should never have such contradictions, as illustrated first by its very headline: “After 2 years in space, the James Webb Space Telescope has broken cosmology. Can it be fixed?”
“Science” isn’t broken in the slightest. All Webb has done is provide new data that does not fit the theories. As physicist Richard Feynman once stated bluntly in teaching students the scientific method,
“It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”
Cosmologists for decades have been guessing in proposing their theories about the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe, and dark matter, based on only a tiny amount of data that had been obtained with enormous assumptions and uncertainties. It is therefore not surprising (nor was it ever surprising) that Webb has blown holes in their theories.
For example, the article spends a lot of time discussing the Hubble constant, describing how observations using different instruments (including Webb) have come up with two conflicting numbers for it — either 67 or 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec. No one can resolve this contradiction. No theory explains it.
To me the irony is that back in the 1990s, when Hubble made its first good measurements of the Hubble constant, these same scientists were certain then that the number Hubble came up with, around 90 kilometers per second per megaparsec, was now correct.
They didn’t really understand reality then, and they don’t yet understand it now.
What cosmologists must do is back away from their theories and recognize the vast areas of ignorance that exist. Once that is done, they might have a chance to resolve the conflict between the data obtained and the theories proposed, and come up with new theories that might work (with great emphasis on the word “might”). Complaining about the paradoxes will accomplish nothing.
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 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
A long detailed article was released today at Space.com, describing the many contradictions in the data coming back from the Webb Space Telescope that seriously challenge all the theories of cosmologists about the nature of the universe as well as its beginning in a single Big Bang.
The article is definitely worth reading, but be warned that it treats science as a certainty that should never have such contradictions, as illustrated first by its very headline: “After 2 years in space, the James Webb Space Telescope has broken cosmology. Can it be fixed?”
“Science” isn’t broken in the slightest. All Webb has done is provide new data that does not fit the theories. As physicist Richard Feynman once stated bluntly in teaching students the scientific method,
“It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”
Cosmologists for decades have been guessing in proposing their theories about the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe, and dark matter, based on only a tiny amount of data that had been obtained with enormous assumptions and uncertainties. It is therefore not surprising (nor was it ever surprising) that Webb has blown holes in their theories.
For example, the article spends a lot of time discussing the Hubble constant, describing how observations using different instruments (including Webb) have come up with two conflicting numbers for it — either 67 or 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec. No one can resolve this contradiction. No theory explains it.
To me the irony is that back in the 1990s, when Hubble made its first good measurements of the Hubble constant, these same scientists were certain then that the number Hubble came up with, around 90 kilometers per second per megaparsec, was now correct.
They didn’t really understand reality then, and they don’t yet understand it now.
What cosmologists must do is back away from their theories and recognize the vast areas of ignorance that exist. Once that is done, they might have a chance to resolve the conflict between the data obtained and the theories proposed, and come up with new theories that might work (with great emphasis on the word “might”). Complaining about the paradoxes will accomplish nothing.
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 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
I can remember a professor in Grad School saying, “The real world is a special case”
I am reminded of the late 19th Century when Newtonian Physics broke down. It took Einstein to show that it was a special case within a new, non-Newtonian universe. Seeing as you get a Newton or Einstein every 500 years or so, we may be in for a wait.
If you go to The World Science Festival channel with Brian Greene at least half the content has opposing views and unknowns with historic perspectives, such as a mention of a paper Einstein once withdrew. By the way, new telescopes are coming on line soon that can see with high resolution the polarization of the cosmic background microwave radiation
Those from a generation or two ago may remember the late Halton (Chip) Arp (1927-2013), whose investigation of what appear to be anomalous redshifts in galaxy pairs was equally unsettling to establishment astronomy at that time.
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/cosmologist-halton-arp-19272013/
Best known in professional circles for his landmark Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies ( https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/frames.html ),
this bestiary has been a veritable field guide for aiming first Hubble and then the Web Space Telescope. “Here there be dragons,” etc.
Happily, he also left behind two popular books that provide a great deal of insight into how establishment science “works” and how it deals with data — and ideas — that aren’t liked.
https://www.amazon.com/Quasars-Redshifts-Controversies-Halton-Arp/dp/0941325008/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=halton+arp&qid=1703858569&s=books&sr=1-3 (1987)
https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Redshifts-Cosmology-Academic/dp/0968368905/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=halton+arp&qid=1703860344&s=books&sr=1-1
Chip Arp’s books remain worth reading, and it might be interesting, now, to go back and see how his interpretation of anomalous galaxy pairings comports with the new WST data. Sadly, as this quote from his obituary in Sky & Telescope makes clear, cancel culture was alive and well even back in the 20th Century.
“With time, as evidence mounted supporting the Big Bang, Arp’s contention was seen as less and less credible. Eventually he was no longer allotted observing time on the world’s big telescopes, and he retired from the Hale staff to join the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics near Munich, Germany. It’s in Munich that he died, at age 86, on December 28th.”
Rest in peace, Chip, and I’d like to think that you are smiling down on us.
Halton Arp
“Intrinsic Red Shift”
Portland, ( 2000)
https://youtu.be/EckBfKPAGNM
(1:00:01)
There was a time when humans thought our Milky Way galaxy was the universe. Some of those weird, diffuse smudges we saw with rudimentary telescopes were actually other galaxies.
As the telescopes improved, we began to collect images of amazing galaxies, of all shapes and sizes. There are even images of galaxies that are, or have, collided with each other.
When a Hubble astronomer decided to take long look (exposure over time) at a very small, but ‘empty’ part of the night sky, the result changed everything. Before this Hubble Deep Field Image, we estimated there were about 200 million galaxies in the known universe. When we let Hubble view this tiny, ‘empty’ spot, thousands of galaxies were revealed. After the Deep Field revelations, we now estimate there may be 2 trillion galaxies.
Recently, the James Webb telescope reaches even further into the universe. They are finding galaxies that ‘shouldn’t exist’ that do not go along with what is/was the current theory. Before Webb, they estimated the age of the universe at 14-15 billion years old. Since Webb is peering ever deeper, our estimates of size and age of the known universe will change. I love putting the adjective ‘known’ before universe. We use the curiosity that God gave us to explore and theorize. We now know that what Hubble gave us as the known universe is not everything. Webb will peer further and further. What is beyond the limit that Webb can detect? We shall see. Webb is an Infrared telescope. Cosmic sshhhhtuff that is not visible to our eyes is found with Webb. The Big Bang always seemed logical, and that background radiation comes from somewhere. Some of us today will not live to see what is beyond what Webb can detect, but it will be fascinating nonetheless.
Robert wrote: “‘Science’ isn’t broken in the slightest. All Webb has done is provide new data that does not fit the theories.”
The theories that were generated before Webb began its service were based on a set of incomplete data. The theories generated due to Webb will be formed based upon another set of incomplete data.
Our model of the universe (called “the standard model”), the theory, is based upon what we know at any given time, but it changes regularly when new instruments present us with new knowledge. We had a model before telescopes, another model with telescopes, another model with radio telescopes, another model when probes flew past planets, and additional models with new space telescopes.
We launched all these telescopes in order to modify the model. We make models so that we can make predictions, such as the weather, how many products we will make next week, or what we might find in the universe (e.g. what we might find in the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud, which are merely locations where hypothesis says we should find objects).
As Robert‘s quote from Richard Feynman means, if the model does not properly predict the future, then it is wrong. As with other areas of science, such as global warming (AKA climate change, AKA the coming ice age), the model is not the real world. People confuse the map for the territory and insist that the models should continue to be used without correction. Because global warming models do not properly predict future climate, they are wrong. As we explore the territory, we modify the map — or should. It is the purpose of science, the activity of learning about the universe around us. However, when scientists modify the data to fit the model, then the scientists have confused the map for the territory.
“What cosmologists must do is back away from their theories and recognize the vast areas of ignorance that exist.”
The same with many other sciences, such as climate science. A major problem is that theories are based upon tested hypotheses, where the tests do not contradict the hypothesis, but hypotheses are merely educated guesses, based upon assumptions. As in engineering, assumptions are hazardous territory. Engineers list our assumptions in order to allow for better analysis; the assumption may be questioned.
In cosmology, the assumptions are sometimes accepted as axiomatic, unquestioned because they are held to be true, and the Space.com article does not question any assumption. In fact, the article states some assumptions as though they are axioms. The Big Bang Theory is rarely questioned, because we see Hubble’s evidence, the comic microwave background evidence, and other evidence, but evidence is not proof. It is all too easy to see a flat earth and assume that if we sail too far we will fall off. It is all too easy to assume that since we don’t see change, evolution does not exist. It is all too easy to assume that because CO2 has an affect on temperature and because humans release CO2 that humans are the cause of rising global temperatures, even during times when the temperatures don’t rise.
Dark matter and dark energy were invented to explain some observations in the universe. They are assumed to exist, but searches for them have come up empty. The article treats these two concepts as established fact, but they are not yet established, just assumed in the same way that in the 19th century aether was assumed by scientists or that for centuries heavier objects were assumed to fall faster than lighter ones.
“Complaining about the paradoxes will accomplish nothing.”
Resolving paradoxes is one of the strengths of science. It may take time to develop the new instruments needed to view the universe in a way that resolves a paradox, but it can be done, and it has been done several times in the past. But there will still be uncertainty in that answer, too.
https://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-solution-for-hubble-tension.html
Looking at local galaxies, the Hubble expansion rate has been measured to be 73 km/s/Mpc. That is, galaxies one megaparsec (Mpc) away from us are apparently moving away from us at 73 km/s. Recently, a new method was devised to predict the Hubble constant from observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background, that represents the cosmos at a redshift of Z=1000, and then extrapolate forward using standard models assuming dark matter and dark energy. Perhaps not surprisingly they predicted a slower cosmos: 67.7 km/s/Mpc. The difference between these values is now beyond a plausible level of chance, so it is a real problem (See Ref).
Now let us calculate what part of this predicted Hubble constant they would miss given that they do not include the extra acceleration due to quantised inertia. It would be 2×10-10 m/s2 over the lifetime of the universe (4.4x1017s) at the cosmic edge (radius = 4.4x1026m). OK. So what would it be at only 1Mpc distance (1Mpc = 3x1022m)?
dH = 2×10^-10 x 3×10^22 x 4.4×10^17 / 4.4×10^26 = 6 km/s/Mpc
The observed discrepancy in the Hubble constant is 5.3 km/s/Mpc. Nice!