Webb confirms galaxy as one of the earliest known in the universe
The uncertainty of science: Using the spectroscopic instrument on the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have confirmed that one of the first galaxies found by Webb, dubbed Maisie’s Galaxy after the daughter of one scientist, is one of the earliest known in the universe, existing only 390 million years after when cosmologies say the Big Bang happened.
The data also showed that another one of these early galaxies spotted by Webb did not exist 250 million years after the Big Bang, but one billion years after, a date that better fits the theories about the early universe, based on the nature of this galaxy.
It turns out that hot gas in CEERS-93316 was emitting so much light in a few narrow frequency bands associated with oxygen and hydrogen that it made the galaxy appear much bluer than it really was. That blue cast mimicked the signature Finkelstein and others expected to see in very early galaxies. This is due to a quirk of the photometric method that happens only for objects with redshifts of about 4.9. Finkelstein says this was a case of bad luck. “This was a kind of weird case,” Finkelstein said. “Of the many tens of high redshift candidates that have been observed spectroscopically, this is the only instance of the true redshift being much less than our initial guess.”
Not only does this galaxy appear unnaturally blue, it also is much brighter than our current models predict for galaxies that formed so early in the universe. “It would have been really challenging to explain how the universe could create such a massive galaxy so soon,” Finkelstein said. “So, I think this was probably always the most likely outcome, because it was so extreme, so bright, at such an apparent high redshift.”
This science team is presently using Webb’s spectroscope to study ten early galaxies in order to better determine their age. Expect more results momentarily.
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The uncertainty of science: Using the spectroscopic instrument on the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have confirmed that one of the first galaxies found by Webb, dubbed Maisie’s Galaxy after the daughter of one scientist, is one of the earliest known in the universe, existing only 390 million years after when cosmologies say the Big Bang happened.
The data also showed that another one of these early galaxies spotted by Webb did not exist 250 million years after the Big Bang, but one billion years after, a date that better fits the theories about the early universe, based on the nature of this galaxy.
It turns out that hot gas in CEERS-93316 was emitting so much light in a few narrow frequency bands associated with oxygen and hydrogen that it made the galaxy appear much bluer than it really was. That blue cast mimicked the signature Finkelstein and others expected to see in very early galaxies. This is due to a quirk of the photometric method that happens only for objects with redshifts of about 4.9. Finkelstein says this was a case of bad luck. “This was a kind of weird case,” Finkelstein said. “Of the many tens of high redshift candidates that have been observed spectroscopically, this is the only instance of the true redshift being much less than our initial guess.”
Not only does this galaxy appear unnaturally blue, it also is much brighter than our current models predict for galaxies that formed so early in the universe. “It would have been really challenging to explain how the universe could create such a massive galaxy so soon,” Finkelstein said. “So, I think this was probably always the most likely outcome, because it was so extreme, so bright, at such an apparent high redshift.”
This science team is presently using Webb’s spectroscope to study ten early galaxies in order to better determine their age. Expect more results momentarily.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
The uncertainty of science indeed! Another metric, the ruler that determines distance is now broken. From the article.
“Objects in space don’t come printed with a time stamp. To infer when the light we observe left an object, astronomers measure its redshift, the amount that its color has been shifted due to its motion away from us. Because we live in an expanding universe, the farther back in time we look, the higher an object’s redshift.”
“To get a more accurate estimate, the CEERS team applied for follow-up measurements with JWST’s spectroscopic instrument, NIRSpec, which splits an object’s light into many different narrow frequencies to more accurately identify its chemical makeup, heat output, intrinsic brightness and relative motion. According to this latest spectroscopic analysis, Maisie’s galaxy is at a redshift of z=11.4”
“this is the only instance of the true redshift being much less than our initial guess.”
Not only does this galaxy appear unnaturally blue, it also is much brighter than our current models predict for galaxies that formed so early in the universe”
Because I am old school, I believe that laws of nature cannot be changed by the whims of a new theory. So often I see theories that sounds good… But they must change unmovable laws of nature to fit the model to make it plausible.
Light is photons with a vibration or frequency which determines its refractive index, and potency. Lower wavelengths don’t have much energy but can pass around dust and debris. Higher wavelengths have more energy but reflect off small molecules in atmospheres. (The difference between summer and winter) (just as light can pass through the screen on the front of your microwave oven, but the microwaves are too long or big to fit through those tiny holes to protect your eyeballs from cooking as you watch)
But the one thing they have in common, once emitted or set in motion, they do not change their color/frequency unless acted upon by another force. (you can change the frequency of light with resistance like using magnetism or time distortion/gravity) (but not gravitational lensing as that just distorts the wavelength into a spectrum… Which everyone knows you cannot reassemble the rainbow without a corrective lens)
My point? A light traveling towards you or away from you will not change it’s frequency/color… Only it’s photon rate being brighter or dimmer.
This article demonstrates that the Red color of distant galaxies (red shift) is probably caused by the filtering of light passing through thousands of light years of intergalactic medium of rare gas molecules large enough to block smaller frequencies but not large enough to block the longer/red frequencies of light. Giving the illusion of red galaxies by filtering, not red shift.
(The Doppler effect does not occur in the vacuum of space, only through a medium such as rock, water, air)
I have a similar problem with black holes, gravity so intense that light cannot escape? Wouldn’t it be more correct to say that light cannot escape because it is frozen in time, not being emitted? Light or energy that escapes the event horizon and entering normal space time, would be very energetic like cosmic rays? (only through the polar vortex like an ion gun theorized by the guy in the wheelchair) Or be slowed to such a low wavelength to be only recognizable as radio waves?
Such a time distortion is a true energy barrier, like a one-way mirror, things enter event horizon then time freezes for eternity. But then I am uncertain about that as well. Perhaps if I went to college, I would be properly programmed to not think of such things.
It reminds me of the restaurant at the end of the universe in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Frozen in time they watched as their star systems ended or went supernova and galaxies expanded out until the universe went dark.
But then observable evidence shows that galaxies are being pulled together, large clusters, another conundrum.
Max: Though I applaud your skepticism, and agree that there are likely many factors contributing to the red shift of distant galaxies (not just the theorized expansion rate of the universe), the red shift of color in light is well documented, in the vacuum of space, for many objects far nearer, including stars in our own galaxy. You cannot simply dismiss it.
Max,
There is an alternate hypothesis called “tired light.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_light
In essence, light shifts toward the red over time or with interactions with particles or other phenomena. It is supposed to explain red shift without the necessity of an expanding universe. Skepticism is natural with any new hypothesis, which is why experimental physicists have jobs finding ways to test these hypotheses.
One hypothesis about black holes is that the lightwave itself is not stopped (it is massless) but that the climb out of the gravity well makes the wavelength longer and longer so that we see nothing of the photon that goes past us/hits our telescope/hits our eyes. It continues at the speed of light, but it contains virtually no energy (very, very long wavelength).
The time change with a black hole is associated with the speed of the particle falling into it. Time for the mass at the center of the black hole continues as normal (whatever normal is for its speed in the universe, possible rotation rate, etc.), but time for anyone traveling on a particle falling into it slows as the particle accelerates as it approaches the event horizon. No one would feel any difference between the outside of this horizon and the inside of it, the horizon is just the location where we outsiders have difficulty seeing any closer to the mass within the black hole (whatever form this crushed matter may take). Those approaching the event horizon would be able to see some distance inside this horizon. A particle orbiting the black hole could conceivably have a perigee (periapsis) that is within the event horizon and an apogee (apoapsis) that is external. Just don’t expect the apogee to be far away.
Black holes are so strange and mysterious that it would be easy to not believe in them if we didn’t see indirect evidence that they really do exist. With this indirect evidence, it is harder to disbelieve, but skepticism here is advisable, also.
I have skepticism about a few other factors about the expansion of the universe as well as about dark matter. One thing I would like to see is the distribution of dark matter in and around a galaxy to get it to rotate as is observed. If there is no such distribution, or it is an unlikely geometry, then maybe dark matter is not the answer to this mystery. It would not be the first time a well known phenomenon was disproved; a century ago, we lost the ether as a medium for light and radio.
Thanks for listening to me gripe, I do love science fiction and the fantasies associated with futuristic events, but when science makes claims and the observations don’t match the data, I tend to not believe it. I am a skeptic.
I’m constantly being told by the main stream media not to believe my “lying eyes”.
I spent a few hours searching pictures of galaxies and particularly ones that are both blue and red at the same time. Most of the pictures had nebula filtering the light to make it appear red. Just as supersized red giants most likely have a white interior but the hydrogen gas that surrounds them only allows the red light wavelength to pass through.
Or pictures of the center of our galaxy being nearly black blocking all light except the longest deep red wavelength and microwave. Thank goodness for that so we can track stars orbiting the central black hole.
I found the unusual galaxy I was looking for, but realized the colors had been enhanced and were no longer real looking destroying the example I was preparing. My classmates and I used to make fun of the galaxy spinning so fast that it has a blue shift and a red shift!
(good luck on the dark matter thing, no matter how you twist it does not explain why a galaxy moves at the same speed like it’s locked in place, like a record player… dark matter complicates the science to the point the people except the explanation “on faith”being too hard to figure out)
I prefer to believe that the galaxy is in balance, the mass on one side counterbalancing the other. Slower living stars to the center, and the ones with more velocity reaching the outer rim but prevented from going into interstellar space by the combine mass of the entire galaxy having a gravity influence which holds it in as it does all the others on the rim. This balance is lost when galaxies collide and we see stars thrown out into interstellar space.
Simple, no dark matter needed. Model based on observation.
The tired light model is a poor theory, distant galaxies would disappear, and nearby galaxies would be fuzzy.
The stretching of the expanding universe would have no effect on a single electron. It would mearly be dimmer, having further to travel, but the theory seems to think that the electron itself and it’s wavelength would be lengthened.
I merely propose a filtering of shorter wavelength of light as a plausible model because of the distances involved and the known interstellar gases that longer wavelength can pass around. The red spectrum is more likely to finish the journey.
Some blue in one of the furthest known objects does not bode well for the red shift model. It would appear that the new infrared telescope which sees in longer wavelengths is having much better luck at seeing the distant objects.
As for red shifted objects in our own galaxy, other influences most likely are involved like the gravity model named after Einstein. (the time distortion from a heavier gravity will lengthen the wavelength in our time frame.)
I would not call this a Doppler effect, but resistance just as electricity passing through a resistor creating heat but reducing the voltage. Magnetism also creates resistance.
Or better explanation yet, a mirrored surface will reflect the sunlight almost entirely, the water in a lake while fishing, will absorb some wavelengths but the higher ones will reflect off given you a mean sunburn. as the angle of the light changes towards noon, more and more of the short wavelength are accepted and pass into the water. A natural filtering process based on angle just like our atmosphere.
Another filtering process is the reflection off the underside of clouds that we see in the morning before sunrise. Only the longest wavelength of light, around 700 nm… (The same absorption lines of carbon dioxide and other gases…) allows us to have a mono colored sunrise without any of the other wavelengths mirrored off the same clouds. Not red shifted, “filtered Spectrum”. Having almost no heat despite the global warming model and the “exaggeration” attributed to this wavelength of light off the upper atmosphere greenhouse? Ha!
Again I’m told not to believe my lying eyes, or my lying thermometer that shows no increase in temperature before the sun peaks over the mountain.
I guess I just don’t know, what I don’t know. That’s why I’m here is to learn, and to understand.
To learn together as new discoveries are made… Causing the uncertainty of science!
Thank you both for your help. Unfortunately I’m too old to learn too many new tricks and you all know how skeptical I am of so many things. I will try to keep an open mind.