Galaxies Underestimated
- Thread starter MolaKule
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Extra funny with your handle.
If you teach physics, then you know that this presentation is, at best, incomplete, and at worst, you don't really understand the arguments.
First, the Big Bang model and a Big Bang singularity are not the same thing. Modern cosmology does not require that we have a complete description of an initial singularity. In fact, most cosmologists would readily acknowledge that general relativity breaks down at sufficiently early times and that a theory of quantum gravity is likely required. Pointing out that the singularity is problematic is hardly a novel criticism. It's something cosmologists have been discussing for decades. EVERY SINGLE COSMOLOGIST I'VE READ HAS EMPHATICALLY STATED NO ONE KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED AT T=0 AND THE BIG BANG MODEL DOES NOT DEPEND ON KNOWING WHAT HAPPENED AT T=0.
Second, the fact that cosmic censorship may not apply to the Big Bang is not some arbitrary exemption invented to save the model. Cosmic censorship was formulated in the context of gravitational collapse within an existing spacetime. The Big Bang is a boundary condition of spacetime itself. Whether the hypothesis even applies in that context is a big question.
In other words, there is a fundamental difference between what happens at the boundary of spacetime and what happens within spacetime. You are treating the two as though they are the same problem governed by the same rules, when they are not. The fact that cosmic censorship applies to singularities formed within an already existing spacetime does not automatically imply that it must apply to a proposed boundary condition of spacetime itself.
A similar example is cosmic expansion. Distant regions of the universe can recede from one another at an effective rate greater than the speed of light due to the expansion of spacetime itself. This does not violate relativity because the speed of light limit applies to the motion of matter, energy, and information through spacetime, not to the expansion of spacetime. You can see how trying to apply similar logic for what happens moving through spacetime and the expansion of spacetime breaks down.
Likewise, one cannot simply assume that principles developed for singularities that form within an existing spacetime automatically apply to a proposed boundary condition of spacetime itself. Those are distinct physical and mathematical situations.
Third, the strength of the standard cosmological model has never rested on direct observation of a singularity. Its success comes from explaining a wide range of observations simultaneously: cosmic expansion, the cosmic microwave background, primordial nucleosynthesis, large-scale structure, gravitational lensing, baryon acoustic oscillations, and much more. Refuting a proposed initial singularity is not the same thing as refuting the framework that successfully explains those observations.
Finally, I agree with you on one point - alternative hypotheses should absolutely be explored. That's how science advances. What I don't agree with is the implication that JWST has somehow overturned the standard cosmological model. So far, every time someone claims JWST has broken cosmology, the details turn out to be considerably more nuanced than the headlines suggest. Tensions and anomalies are not the same thing as falsification.
The real question isn't whether alternative models should be considered. Of course they should. The question is whether those alternatives explain the existing body of evidence better than the current model. That's a much higher bar than simply pointing out unresolved questions.
It was a joke so let's roll with it.
Go back and read my previous post, and you will see I brought up one big one. There are laws that it contradicts.......laws, not theories.
No I understand it perfectly. It applies very neatly here. Attacking my intelligence, is very telling in your MO. Please tone it down a bit.
No, it is likely that I am not as learned as you.
MolaKule
Staff member
"27. Science progresses by testing a hypothesis against the available evidence obtained through experiment and observation of the natural world. It is not based on the authority or opinion of individuals or institution. In fact the Royal Society motto ‘Nullius in verba’ can be roughly translated as ’take nobody's word for it.’” Parliament House of Commons: Science and Technology Committee, Peer Review in Scientific Publications (Great Britain: Stationery Office, 2011), 103."
Quoted in: https://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/authority.html
Quoted in: https://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/authority.html
If only that philosophy held sway in many areas of life and inquiry. Politics injects its corrosive effect on the pursuit of science in countless ways and instances.
JWST is certainly demonstrating the effects of exclusion bias on what is called "science". This seams to be a major issue in several fields.
I think you're touching on something important here, which is that many of our intuitions are built from everyday experiences, and the universe often behaves very differently at cosmic scales.
For example, the Big Bang wasn't really an explosion in the conventional sense. An explosion occurs at a point in space and throws energy/matter outward into surrounding space. The Big Bang model describes space itself expanding everywhere at once. There wasn't a central location that debris flew away from. This is a basic but really important concept to understanding any of this. We're not talking about the stuff in the room, we're talking about the room itself, the background through which stuff moves and interacts.
As for not seeing "half planets" or "stars in the making," we actually do observe objects at many different stages of formation. Astronomers have observed protoplanetary disks around young stars, stellar nurseries where stars are actively forming, protostars that haven't yet begun fusion, and galaxies at different stages of evolution. The reason we don't often think of them as "half formed" is that these processes occur over millions or billions of years.
Your point about complexity is also interesting. Entropy does increase overall, but locally, complexity can emerge because the law of entropy (second law of thermodynamics) requires a closed systems and the universe is not a closed system. A star, planet, hurricane, or living organism can become more organized while the total entropy of the larger system still increases. Localized areas have energy being injected into them from adjacent areas and that energy does the work of undoing entropy locally.
I think your observation about galaxies being in different states at the same time is actually one of the strongest pieces of evidence that the universe evolves. When we look farther away, we're looking further back in time because light takes time to travel. So astronomers literally see younger galaxies at great distances and more mature galaxies closer to us. In a sense, the universe gives us snapshots from many different eras simultaneously.
So I don't think you're seeing a contradiction as much as you're running into the limits on the applicability of analogies like explosions and everyday experience.
I didn't attack your intelligence. I challenged your use of a term.
There's a difference between saying "you are unintelligent" and saying "you're applying a concept incorrectly." The latter is a criticism of an argument, not a person's intellect.
My point was that an appeal to authority occurs when someone argues that a claim is true solely because an authority figure says it is. Pointing out that expertise matters in highly technical fields is not the same thing as making an appeal to authority.
If I tell someone they should probably understand the Standard Model before declaring it unsupported, I'm not saying physicists are right because they're physicists. I'm saying the evidence and arguments are complex enough that some level of familiarity is necessary before making confident claims about them.
So no, I wasn't attacking your intelligence. I was disagreeing with your characterization of the argument.
Hmmm, that is what I have heard, that seems like a long time. Way longer than our observation time.
Really? So a star is becoming more organized, more complex? Where is the heat coming from?
A hurricane get more organized? Then why all the destruction?
Living thing? Guess that takes millions of years, again, not observable, or testable....different arguement.
Tell you what, lets do a simple thought experiment.....simple since I am a simpleton. Lets get a puzzle, you know the ones that come in the cardboard box? Lets get one of those, not take it out of the box and shake it. You can shake it however you want. You can talk to it, dance with it, take it out on a date. While we are at it, lets give 100 people the same puzzle and give them 100 years, and not one of the folks in this test would come out with anything other than a destroyed box of nothing. You will never get an assembled puzzle. You would likely never get multiple pieces that were supposed to be together, together. Never.
I think you misunderstand, or I mistyped.
No we see different things, not necessarily the same thing at different stages.
Our entire existence, if the accepted story is true, is in conflict. We are not going to agree. Leave it good at that.
Yes, star formation takes a very long time compared to a human lifetime, but we don't need to watch a single star form from beginning to end. We can observe millions of stars and gas clouds at different stages and essentially reconstruct the process, much like you don't need to watch a person from birth to death to understand human development.
As for the complexity question, it seems counterintuitive at first. A star does become more organized than the diffuse cloud of gas it formed from. The key is that the organization comes from gravity.
Imagine a huge cloud of hydrogen gas. Gravity causes the gas to collapse inward. As the gas falls toward the center, gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. The particles move faster and collide more frequently, which generates heat. The cloud gets hotter and denser until the core becomes hot enough for nuclear fusion to begin.
So the heat isn't coming from nowhere. It's coming from the conversion of gravitational energy during the collapse.
A hurricane is actually a great example.
A hurricane becomes more organized as it forms. It develops structure, circulation patterns, an eye, and energy flows that are far more ordered than the warm ocean water and atmosphere from which it emerged. The destruction it causes has nothing to do with whether it is organized or disorganized. A wrecking ball is highly organized too.
The important point is that the hurricane isn't a closed system. It's constantly drawing energy from warm ocean water and releasing heat into the atmosphere. The hurricane can become more organized while the total entropy of the larger Earth-atmosphere system increases.
The puzzle analogy is creative, but it assumes the very thing that's being debated.
A box of puzzle pieces being shaken is essentially a closed system with no mechanism to select, preserve, or build upon successful arrangements. The pieces have no way to "remember" progress. Every shake is just random rearrangement. Nature doesn't work that way.
A better analogy would be a puzzle where pieces that fit together become locked in place, where successful configurations are preserved, and where energy is continuously flowing through the system. That's much closer to how processes like crystal formation, star formation, chemical reactions, and biological evolution actually work.
We see ordered structures emerge from simpler components all the time. Snowflakes form. Crystals grow. Hurricanes self-organize. Stars condense from diffuse gas clouds. None of these require an intelligent hand assembling them piece by piece. The key difference is that these systems are governed by physical laws that favor certain arrangements over others. They tend to evolve toward configurations that minimize free energy, while increasing the total entropy of the larger system. They are not random shuffles like the puzzle pieces.
I don't think the question is whether random shaking can assemble a puzzle. I think the question is whether nature is accurately described as random shaking. And that's where the analogy breaks down.
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MolaKule
Staff member
To say that you are the only one who has the only understanding of these issues is incorrect. Let's not get dismissive of other people's opinions, perspectives, or experiences, acting as though your own thoughts are superior.
I do understand the arguments with 56 years of experience in this and associated fields.
The singularity is part and parcel of the BB model.
To propose a singularity and then to not explain or say they then don't know is a serious copout and diversion.
I am sure it does apply just as it applies to Black Holes as well. Your demarcations here seem to be a self-serving attempt to save a failing cosmological model.
I never said nor implied that new JWST has overturned current cosmology. In fact, it has caused us to reconsider current cosmic theories and predictions. But do to the present models having failed predictions wrt to recent JWST findings, alternative hypothesis should be considered.
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All systems? In the entire universe?
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I do understand the arguments with 56 years of experience in this and associated fields.
Now there's an appeal to authority! I'm kidding, I acknowledge your experience whole heartedly.
The singularity is part and parcel of the BB model.
The Big Bang model describes the expansion of the universe from an extremely hot, dense early state. The mathematical singularity appears when we run General Relativity backward to (t=0), but most cosmologists do not consider the singularity itself to be a physical prediction. Rather, it's generally viewed as an indication that General Relativity has reached the limits of its applicability and that a quantum theory of gravity is needed.
To propose a singularity and then to not explain or say they then don't know is a serious copout and diversion.
I would argue the opposite.
A copout would be pretending to know the answer when the evidence isn't there. Saying "our current models work up to this point, and beyond that we don't yet know" is intellectual honesty.
Every scientific theory has a domain where it works and a domain where it breaks down. Newton couldn't explain Mercury's orbit. That wasn't a "copout", it was a clue that a better theory was needed. Einstein's theory later explained it.
The singularity isn't something cosmologists invented to avoid questions. It's what falls out of General Relativity when the equations are extrapolated backward. The fact that the mathematics breaks down there is one of the main reasons physicists believe a more complete theory, likely involving quantum gravity, is needed.
If anything, science has a pretty good track record of saying, "Here's what we know, here's what we think we know, and here's what we don't know yet." That's a lot more honest than claiming certainty where none exists.
I am sure it does apply just as it applies to Black Holes as well. Your demarcations here seem to be a self-serving attempt to save a failing cosmological model.
I'm not trying to save anything. I'm trying to distinguish between what the model actually says and what people often claim it says.
The singularity in cosmology and the singularity in black hole solutions arise for the same reason - General Relativity predicts quantities becoming infinite under certain conditions. Most physicists don't view that as evidence that an actual physical infinity exists. They view it as evidence that the theory is being pushed beyond the regime where it can be trusted.
That's not a self-serving distinction. It's a standard one throughout physics.
If a model produces infinities, physicists generally don't celebrate that as a successful prediction. They usually take it as a sign that some underlying assumption is breaking down. That's why there is so much interest in quantum gravity in the first place.
As for the Big Bang being a "failing cosmological model," I'd ask failing relative to what? The model successfully predicted the expansion of the universe, the cosmic microwave background, the abundance of light elements, and many aspects of large-scale structure formation. You can certainly argue that it is incomplete, and I would agree. But incomplete and failing are not the same thing.
Every major scientific theory has unanswered questions. The existence of unanswered questions is not evidence that the parts of the theory that have been repeatedly confirmed are suddenly invalid.
CleanSump
Site Donor 2026
This has turned into "I'm right and you're wrong and I'll defend my ego until the thread is locked".
The assumption that the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe is known as the Principle of Uniformity, and it is closely related to the Copernican Principle and the Cosmological Principle.
The Principle of Uniformity states that the physical laws we observe here on Earth operate the same way elsewhere in the universe and have operated the same way throughout cosmic history. Without this assumption, science would be nearly impossible. We could not infer anything about distant stars, galaxies, or the early universe because we would have no reason to believe the physics we observe locally applies there.
Importantly, this is not simply taken on faith. It is supported by observation. When astronomers analyze light from stars and galaxies billions of light-years away, they find the same atomic fingerprints that we measure in laboratories on Earth. The same laws of electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and gravity appear to be operating across vast distances and timescales.
Of course, this does not mean physicists claim with absolute certainty that the laws of physics are identical everywhere and at all times. Science rarely deals in absolute certainty. Rather, it is an inference based on an enormous amount of evidence. So far, every time we have looked deeper into space or further back in time, the same fundamental laws appear to apply.
If someone wishes to argue that a particular region of the universe operates under different physical laws, that is a perfectly valid hypothesis. However, the burden then shifts to providing evidence for that exception. The current scientific position is not that the laws are universally applicable because scientists say so, but because that assumption has repeatedly proven successful in explaining and predicting what we observe.
Or it's just a healthy discussion.
Whah!!!! Mommy and Daddy are fighting, lol
Means it's past your bedtime, Son.
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