Galaxies Underestimated

[burbguy82]

The quest for knowledge should probably not be limited to practical applications.

No, but it should be limited to the practical application of knowledge, built on other known laws, which are well known and well established. It is foolish to find a way to do something that is known to be impossible.

Do we know how long galaxies exist? I don't think we do

I agree. If observation and replication is the mode that proves anything.

The value is that these new finds run counter to the cosmological principle and that we need to recognize alternative hypotheses.

I always found it odd that there are so many like bodies out there, like planets for example, but no "half planet" or "star in the making".

The big bang for example, at least in a simple context......an explosion......I have seen enough explosions to know that as the debris leaves the genesis of said explosion, the amount of matter per square ft (as example) gets less and less dense, not the same in all areas with even dispersion. Of course, explosions do not typically create anything, but make them less complex. Entropy. This would suggest that the universe would have been most complex at its beginning, and as time moves on, things would be less complex.

If all things in the universe would be the same at all times form all perspectives, I just cant make out how all these galaxies would be in the same state at the same "time".

I may not fully understand the cocept.....but, there seems to be a contradiction.

Interesting.

 

[StarCaller]

We are simply a grain of sand in the universe.

The math doesn't support that analogy /
We are significantly smaller than a grain of sand /
There are roughly 26,000 stars out there for every single grain of sand on Earth /
If you scaled the entire universe down to the size of our planet, Earth would just be the size of an atom /

 

[TomYoung]

The math doesn't support that analogy /
We are significantly smaller than a grain of sand /
There are roughly 26,000 stars out there for every single grain of sand on Earth /
If you scaled the entire universe down to the size of our planet, Earth would just be the size of an atom /

Most intelligent response in this thread. Nice.

 

[dkryan]

To quote our Vulcan friend Spock………”fascinating “

 

[TomYoung]

The dark matter theory has always felt wrong to me.

No expert here, but in modern physics, in my experience, there is just no meaning or expectation that anything is going to feel right. The exception is 0W8 oil, which does not feel right to anyone.

 

[Revving2Redline]

No expert here, but in modern physics, in my experience, there is just no meaning or expectation that anything is going to feel right. The exception is 0W8 oil, which does not feel right to anyone.

Unless made by Redline Oil or High Performance Lubricants I completely agree. Better have a hths of at least 2.6

 

[Sedin26]

View attachment 344043
Beyond our ability to comprehend.

True but I like to try anyway

 

[Kira]

There are roughly 26,000 stars out there for every single grain of sand on Earth /

Just a question which goes to methodology.
Since we're using broad averaging over multiples of many orders of magnitude, I gotta ask.
Are the "grains of sand" determined by assessing the total beachfront on Earth (volume of sand only) and adding some multiplication (avg grains of sand per unit volume) OR is the entire volume of Earth's sphere used for the volume of sand?

 

[TomYoung]

Just a question which goes to methodology.
Since we're using broad averaging over multiples of many orders of magnitude, I gotta ask.
Are the "grains of sand" determined by assessing the total beachfront on Earth (volume of sand only) and adding some multiplication (avg grains of sand per unit volume) OR is the entire volume of Earth's sphere used for the volume of sand?

Sand is everywhere on Earth. So beachfront is not really the way to quantify it.

 

[fdcg27]

Just as the JWST is looking further back into space and seeing more and more galaxies, this tends to negate the Dark Matter hypothesis. The missing matter may simply be the galaxies we have not seen as yet.

You could just as well say that this confirms the dark matter theory.
If we knew that there had to be a lot more mass out there than we could observe based upon gravitational effects, then we simply postulated that mass and it was literally dark matter because we could not observe it.
Now that we can begin to observe it, the dark aspect falls away and the mass we knew must be there is no longer dark but now observable.
IOW, what was once dark matter is now no longer dark.
OTOH, it is hard to wrap one's mind around the notion of there being two trillion galaxies.
Two trillion of something that large and massive?
Our universe is far more vast than what was previously thought.

 

[PWMDMD]

A theory is always only as good as what we can test it with.

To this day we have only enough technology to observe what we can and that limit what we can understand. IMO the "dark energy" and "infinite universe" theories are just people throwing every unsolved variables into a hypothesis people cannot disprove, IMO just a lazy science to explain things.

Every scientific theory is limited by the quality of the observations and experiments available at the time. Science has a long history of replacing or refining ideas as better instruments become available. Where I disagree is the characterization of dark energy or an infinite universe as "lazy science." Neither concept was invented to explain away unknowns. They emerged because observations didn't match existing models.

For example, dark energy was proposed after multiple independent observations showed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, something that standard gravity alone could not explain. Scientists did not start with dark energy and then look for evidence. The evidence came first, and dark energy is currently the best explanation that fits the data.

Likewise, an infinite universe is not an untestable assumption. It is one possible conclusion based on measurements of the universe's geometry and large-scale structure. Scientists actively look for observations that could support or rule out different models, including finite universes.

The key point is that science does not require absolute proof. It requires models that make predictions and survive attempts to falsify them. Dark energy is not accepted because it is impossible to disprove. It is accepted because, so far, it explains observations better than competing models. History shows that today's best explanation may be incomplete or even wrong. That's not a weakness of science. That's exactly how science progresses.

 

[PWMDMD]

The dark matter theory has always felt wrong to me.

Sparks fly out of the back of my head when I read comments like this because feelings have absolutely nothing to do with whether a scientific theory is correct. Quantum mechanics is arguably the most successful and thoroughly tested theory in human history, yet almost nobody finds it intuitively satisfying. Reality is under no obligation to conform to human intuition.

A few examples:

1. Quantum objects can exist in a superposition of states until measured. Nothing in our everyday world behaves in this manner.
2. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle tells us that position and momentum cannot both be known with arbitrary precision at the same time. This isn't a limitation of our instruments; it's a fundamental feature of nature. Nothing in our everyday world behaves like this either.
3. Quarks exhibit confinement. Unlike gravity or electromagnetism, the strong force does not simply weaken as distance increases. In fact, the energy required to separate quarks grows with distance until enough energy is stored to create new quark-antiquark pairs, preventing isolated quarks from being observed. Gravity, electromagnetism, sound, all follow the inverse square law with energy levels dropping precipitously the farther the distance separating the objects.

None of these ideas "feel" right from a common-sense perspective. We accept them because they make precise predictions that have been experimentally confirmed over and over again.

Science isn't about what seems intuitive. It's about what survives contact with reality.

 

[Tom NJ]

The micro side is just as mind boggling. There are more water molecules in one drop of water than grains of sand on all beaches on earth.

 

[PWMDMD]

The micro side is just as mind boggling. There are more water molecules in one drop of water than grains of sand on all beaches on earth.

By at least an order of magnitude and possibly 2-3 orders of magnitude.

Water molecules in a drop ~ 1x10^21

Grains of sand on earth ~ 1x10^18-20

That's anywhere from 17x to 1700x more water molecules in drop of water than sand on all the beaches.

 

[97prizm]

Two trillion galaxies fill the observable universe- ten times the old estimate- and most are too faint for any telescope to see:

https://spacedaily.com/s-at-least-t...ny-telescope-today-to-see-a-2016-study-found/

Just as the JWST is looking further back into space and seeing more and more galaxies, this tends to negate the Dark Matter hypothesis. The missing matter may simply be the galaxies we have not seen as yet.

Cool. It's interesting how little we know about the universe. I still think it's nuts that several stars we see have already burned out yet we still see light from them.

 

[PWMDMD]

Cool. It's interesting how little we know about the universe. I still think it's nuts that several stars we see have already burned out yet we still see light from them.

I'll push back on the idea that we know "little" about the universe. We don't know everything about the universe, but we know an extraordinary amount.

We know its age to within a fraction of a percent. We know it's expanding and can measure the expansion rate. We know the composition of stars, how they form, evolve, and die. We understand nuclear fusion, black holes, neutron stars, gravitational waves, and the life cycles of galaxies. We can detect planets around other stars and analyze the atmospheres of some of them.

What's even more remarkable is that we don't just understand distant cosmic objects. We understand the physics of our everyday world with incredible precision. We know how electricity powers our homes, how semiconductors make computers possible, how chemistry governs everything from batteries to medicine, and how the quantum mechanics of atoms gives rise to the properties of matter itself. The device you're reading this on works only because our understanding of nature is accurate enough to engineer billions of transistors at nanometer scales.

The things we don't know, like the nature of dark matter and dark energy, tend to get a lot of attention because they're some of the biggest remaining mysteries. But that can create the impression that we know very little overall. We can't put a percentage on how much of reality we've figured out because we don't know the size of the remaining unknowns. But we know enough to build computers, land spacecraft on other planets, detect gravitational waves, measure the age of the universe, and predict the behavior of matter with astonishing precision. That's not a picture of ignorance. That's a picture of a species that has learned an extraordinary amount and still has more to discover.

Not long ago, the ability to consistently make fire was the height of human understanding and technology...we've learned and know a lot in a very very short period of time.

Humans are funny - we tend to discount what is knowable and what we already know while simultaneously choosing to believe in the unknowable. Many humans think it about it backwards.