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The Big Bang didn't happen: What do the James Webb images show?
- nonameking2026 4y agomusic autoplay ? really ?
- behnamoh 4y agoSummary by a commenter in the link: Radio astronomy observations of Pulsars indicate that the Hubble Red Shift is caused by “Tired Light” rather than the expansion of the universe. When Hubble published his observations of red shifted light from distant objects there were two possible explanations that came to the fore. One, originated by Georges Lemaitre, was that the Universe was expanding. The other, from Fritz Zwicky, was that light lost energy as it traveled, termed "tired light". At that time, ca. 1930, interstellar and intergalactic space were assumed to be perfect vacuums and thus there was no mechanism to redden the light. Now, 90 years later, we have actual observational evidence that Zwicky was right. In the radio astronomy of Pulsars we find that the shorter wavelengths of the leading edge of the pulse arrive before longer wavelengths. The velocity of light, c, is NOT constant but varies by wavelength. This time dispersion is proportional to the distance from us of the pulsar, indicating that the reduction in velocity is cumulative. The observed effect is isotropic. The interstellar medium is not a vacuum but rather affects light waves in a way best described as having an Index of Refraction greater than 1, unity. We find the same phenomenon in the observation of Fast Radio Bursts from other galaxies, thus indicating that the intergalactic media is not an electromagnetic vacuum.
- ramesh31 4y agoSounds like this commenter should write a paper.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoI think it would be more apt to suggest they write/consult for science programming, but I certainly agree with your sentiment.
- kurupt213 4y agowhy, it won't make it through peer review. high frequency light arrives first because it interacts less with matter. remember, c is only constant in a true vacuum. the speed of light varies as it travels through matter (refraction). there is a lot of "stuff" to interact with between us and a galaxy 14 billion light years away i wonder if the energy of empty space (yes, empty space has energy) plays a role in slowly dissipating the energy from light.
- ramesh31 4y ago>why, it won't make it through peer review. That was my point.
- andrewclunn 4y agoSo no unavailable pitch black sky save for our local group? This is the best freaking cosmological news I've ever heard!
- peterlk 4y agoOk…. So I’m going to try to rephrase what I just learned from this comment. Can someone tell me how far off I am? The universe is not 100% empty, so the index of refraction is not 1. This could be explained by lots of phenomena like dust particles or stray radiation, etc. Because of this effect, for practical purposes, light that we see as res “travels slower” because it has traveled through more media than blue light.
- starwind 4y agoCurious, I googled "In the radio astronomy of Pulsars we find that the shorter wavelengths of the leading edge of the pulse arrive before longer wavelengths. The velocity of light, c, is NOT constant but varies by wavelength" and something interesting came up: "interstellar clouds of electrons retard the velocity of radio waves in direct proportion to their wavelength" in an article from a 1968 edition of Scientific American written by Anthony Hewish...the same guy who discovered pulsars
- eecc 4y agoLook up Hannes Halven then, also very interesting.
- 8bitsrule 4y agoDispersion has been evident since FRBs were discovered in 2007. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst] "The component frequencies of each burst are delayed by different amounts of time depending on the wavelength. This delay is described by a value referred to as a dispersion measure (DM). This results in a received signal that sweeps rapidly down in frequency, as longer wavelengths are delayed more." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_(optics)#Pulsar_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_(optics)#Pulsar_emi...] "dispersion measure (DM) is the column density of free electrons (total electron content) — i.e. the number density of electrons (electrons/cm3) integrated along the path traveled by the photon from the pulsar to the Earth"
- pdonis 4y ago> Tired Light Is a hypothesis that, as a sole or primary explanation of observed redshifts of galaxies, has been thoroughly debunked in the scientific literature. > the intergalactic media is not an electromagnetic vacuum This is true, but it cannot explain the observed data by itself, because the observed data is not "redshifts" by themselves. The observed data is a combination of redshifts, apparent luminosity, and angular size for thousands of observed galaxies. These data have observable relationships that can only be explained by cosmological expansion. If the redshifts were caused solely by dispersion in the intergalactic medium, their relationships with apparent luminosity and angular size would be very, very different. That is a quick summary of the thorough debunking of "tired light" that can be found in the scientific literature over a period of some decades.
- Ekaros 4y agoInter galactic space not being empty makes lot of sense. After all everything that is matter(stars etc.) had to come from somewhere. If universe is expanding is it getting thinner? That is same amount of matter is spreading over larger space. Thus wouldn't the refraction index be higher on average when observing the path from really old objects?
- luhn 4y ago> One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!” Completely burying the full title "Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field" which is the best Panic! at the Disco pun I've seen in a long time.
- soneil 4y agoNot just burying, but very disingenuously so. Than you for looking that up, it speaks volumes.
- luhn 4y ago"Looking that up" is giving me too much credit, I just clicked the link :) I don't think it's disingenuous, just out of touch. The author is 75 years old; he probably didn't recognize a 2000s-2010s pop culture pun.
- ericlerner 4y agoThe reference to the band is only funny because the paper clearly shows that the whole collision-merger theory that is fundamental to cosmology today is wrong, so the theorists will panic. It's an inside joke. As my article says, no mergers, no growth of galaxies, no tiny galaxies long ago, no expansion optical illusion and thus no expansion.
- kirykl 4y ago>“Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning,” says Alison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, “and wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.” This is science. It differs from the media's Science™
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- mounceyboy 4y agoRobert A Wilson's blog, hidden assumptions, has been arguing there are also problems with general relativity and the conservation of mass. His work, consistently rejected despite respect for his mathematical expertise, has recently been published in peer review. He has also questioned whether the Big bang doesn't raise more questions than it answers, alongside dark matter.
- colechristensen 4y agoLots of people do this. Come up with a theory with testable set of predictions that isn’t just a patchwork of models glued together to explain data and then you’ll convince people.
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago>Come up with a theory with testable set of predictions that isn’t just a patchwork of models glued together to explain data and then you’ll convince people. The dark matter crowd was able to convince quite a few people without hurdling such a high bar, not to mention stuff like string-theory..
- starwind 4y agoOur current understanding of gravitational lensing and the speed of galaxy rotations would both suggest that we're between 80-90% of the mass in the universe. It's important to note the missing mass calculated via lensing and the missing mass calculated via the speed of galatic rotations matches pretty well. Whatever this stuff is, we don't see it directly, and we don't know what it is. Dark matter is the result of observations...of something
- pdonis 4y ago> The dark matter crowd was able to convince quite a few people without hurdling such a high bar I don't know where you're getting this from. Dark matter models make lots of testable predictions, and they currently match the overall data set (which includes many different observations, not just the galaxy rotation curves that are most often mentioned) better than any other models. > not to mention stuff like string-theory Here I agree: string theory has not made a single testable prediction.
- Sanzig 4y agoAuthor's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner I get the impression he's regarded as something of a crank in astrophysics communities.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoBut that's the problem with groupthink, isn't it? That is, wrong until it's not and then suddenly everyone pretends like they knew it was true all along. Science has ego-issues the same way sports and entertainment do. Scientists aren't any less human than the rest of us (tho' they often seem to pretend otherwise).
- awb 4y agoThe alternative is for the group to exhaustively spend time entertaining every theory so as not to exclude anyone prematurely. Shouldn’t the burden of proof be placed on the individual rather than the group?
- Tao3300 4y ago> Shouldn’t the burden of proof be placed on the individual rather than the group? Yes, but don't cover your ears and yell "burden of proooooof" so loudly that you can't hear them out.
- karpierz 4y agoThe earth is round, until it isn't?
- polemic 4y agoOn the other hand, scientific consensus isn't "groupthink", and being a contrarian doesn't automatically entitle you to other people's attention and time.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoOr does it? There are plenty of examples where science got it wrong. Were it took years, even decades to get enough people to listen.* That's not the way science is supposed to work. Politics? Yes. But not science. I trust you can do the math from here. * And when the tides turn, these not even an acknowledgement, let alone an apology. Scientists shouldn't not be turning in their graves for lacking an apology. That level of arrogance is also not healthy and proper Science.
- xqcgrek2 4y agoCrackpot stuff, unfortunately. The CMB and host of other stuff is evidence for a Big Bang. The merger stuff JWST has falsifed was never really on solid ground anyway but tuned cosmological simulations. The simulations probably got subgrid physics wrong (same issue as climate models face).
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoYou may be right, but I think referring to this perspective as “Crackpot stuff” is entirely too strong a criticism. Wormholes and flying cars are “crackpot stuff.” But regarding this question it feels like you are reaching for the strongest possible language to rebut a position you simply disagree with. We really are in a moment where serious astronomers and astrophysicists are evaluating validity and correctness of some of our most fundamental assumptions about the universe, to a degree that we simply haven’t seen since at least the mapping of the CMB, and perhaps longer.
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- excalibur 4y ago> Wormholes and flying cars are “crackpot stuff.” Umm, wormholes maybe. Flying cars have existed for the better part of a century. The fact that nobody has successfully brought one to market yet means that you and I don't have them. But humanity certainly does. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_car https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_car
- alex_young 4y agoIs this from the same guy who started Birds Aren't Real?
- timmg 4y agoI have no idea if this is true or not. But for a moment I was just imagining a world where scientists agreed that the Big Bang never happened. How many physicists' work would be thrown in the trash? How many high school science books would have to be updated? How would the general public's trust in science change? Would be such an interesting thing to observe.
- TT-392 4y agoWouldn't be the first time something like that happened. We used to think mars had civilization and canals until not too long ago (kinda funny that the drawings of those canals ended up looking a lot like the veins in a human eye). Also, the idea of radio waves going through the ether, on which a lot of science was based got disproved at some point.
- HKH2 4y ago> We used to think mars had civilization and canals until not too long ago Who? I've never heard of such an idea.
- notpachet 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canals
- aeternum 4y agoIndeed, nowadays everyone knows that radio waves propagate through quantum fields which pervade the entire universe including vacuums. Definitely not ether, those foolish old scientists got the name wrong :D
- eecc 4y agoI don’t think anyone thinks fields exist, physically at least. They’re mathematical constructs that model certain operations but there’s no EM field or G field by itself, independently of a physical particle expressing these forces
- rotolop 4y ago
- rossdavidh 4y agoSo, interesting if true, but I have not the expertise to tell if I'm reading an article by a crackpot or not. If there are any H.N. readers who are experts in astronomy, by which I mean a Ph.D. in it or it's your paid profession, who could tell me just how "out there" this article is, I would be grateful.
- sdwr 4y agohttps://youtu.be/U3Ak-SmyHHQ https://youtu.be/U3Ak-SmyHHQ Anyone know why this took so long to discover, if true? Is the James Webb that much more powerful than the Hubble? I'd love if this turned out to be an epicycle moment. It reinforces my belief that being paradigm-flexible is valuable.
- kurupt213 4y agothe james webb mirror is soooo much larger than the hubble's (6.5m vs 2.4m diameter). if i recall, the hubble telescope fits in the Orbiter cargo bay
- RachelF 4y agoJames web can see in the infra-red. Light from long ago is shifted into this band. Hubble could not see as far into the infra-red.
- i_no_can_eat 4y agoThis guy is a known crackpot. He's not a serious researcher and has no published papers in astrophysics. File under "horseshit".
- medo-bear 4y ago> He's not a serious researcher and has no published papers in astrophysics. according to wikipedia hes been funded by nasa. and also looks like youre incorrect about not being published https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.08382 https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.08382
- Tade0 4y agoThe "Panic!" bit is a reference to the pop-rock band Panic! At the Disco: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic!_at_the_Disco https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic!_at_the_Disco
- mensetmanusman 4y ago“ If the universe is expanding, a strange optical illusion must exist. Galaxies (or any other objects) in expanding space do not continue to look smaller and smaller with increasing distance. Beyond a certain point, they start looking larger and larger. (This is because their light is supposed to have left them when they were closer to us.)” Interesting misunderstanding of inflation.
- gus_massa 4y agoI think it's a real effect. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2622/ https://xkcd.com/2622/ Unofficial Explanation: https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2622:_Angular_Diameter_Turnaround https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2622:_Angular_Diamete... Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter_distance#Angular_diameter_turnover_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter_distance#Angu...
- pedalpete 4y agoThough the article is probably incorrect, it lead me to think about how the Big Bang is mostly built upon a paradigm of the understanding of the time. We understood explosions and how atoms would interact based on that. It is similar to how in the 1800s we thought of the body as a connection of pipes and fluids because that is how we understood things. Then as we built a greater understanding of electricity, we now see the electrical components of the body. Which doesn't negate the plumbing version, but we now have a greater understanding of how muscles and the brain work.
- kurupt213 4y agowhat does the [flagged] mean? any theory that gets rid of dark matter is better than what we have now. the cosmological constant was one thing (turns out Einstein found the quantized minimum energy of empty space, before quantum mechanics). This dark matter folly is taking fudge factor to the extreme. it's lazy.
- eikenberry 4y agoIt means that the topic was controversial enough that some people flagged it.
- halfjoking 4y agoBig Pharma and their fraudulent vaccine trials were enough for me… Now we have to worry about Big Cosmo?
- medo-bear 4y agoi think this is unfairly flagged
- while_true_ 4y agoSo the linked article is the work of a crank, but it does raise a fair question: is the density of small distant galaxy smudges on the Webb image consistent with Big Bang theory?
- RachelF 4y agoYes, this is the crux of the matter. Forget the ad-hominem "he's a known crank" arguments. He raises valid questions in his article, if he's a crank, then refute his facts or conclusions.
- Ekaros 4y agoI'm all for scientific community entertaining the valid questions of even the cranks. Specially when it should pretty quick answer or actually an interesting one that might be worth to spend bit of time on. Not entirety of their production is bad. And they can offer some different perspectives.
- arvigeus 4y agoExpectations: Discussion about the article, the arguments, and what it got right and what it got wrong. Reality: Ad hominem “The author is a crackpot!”
- Fatnino 4y ago@dang can we get this domain banned? Everything coming from there is crank science and it seems to be showing up at least once a day this week. Mostly this same story.
- nederland 4y agohttps://archive.ph/sMpXv https://archive.ph/sMpXv Quote: If the universe is expanding, a strange optical illusion must exist. Galaxies (or any other objects) in expanding space do not continue to look smaller and smaller with increasing distance. Beyond a certain point, they start looking larger and larger. (This is because their light is supposed to have left them when they were closer to us.) This is in sharp contrast to ordinary, non-expanding space, where objects look smaller in proportion to their distance. I just woke up and I don't get this...
- eecc 4y agosee this https://xkcd.com/2622/ https://xkcd.com/2622/
- xrayarx 4y agoHaving read the article, I also come to the conclusion that this is unfairly flagged. All ad hominem comments here should be removed. This is just one of many physicists arguing against the current mainstream hypothesis.
- ericlerner 4y agoHey all, Somebody talking 'bout me? Why don't you all tune in next month to our debate in London https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/cosmology-and-the-big-bust-11005 https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/cosmology-and-the-big-b... Science advances by comparing predictions with subsequent observations. Right now the Big Bang makes 16 wrong quantitative predictions and one right one. The details are not in serious dispute in the literature. My conclusions are what's controversial. The consensus is "well we can fix all these problems, just wait." Sort of like getting on an airline that just had 16 crashes out of 17 flights. But throw out the Big Bang and you've got a lot of correct predictions. Details here: https://youtu.be/tK3OStArUqE https://youtu.be/tK3OStArUqE
- eecc 4y agoHey Eric, I wonder if that really you. Just wanted to say hi, read your book many years ago and found the Plasma Universe theory very fascinating and frankly less bleak than the Big Bang with its philosophical implications about irreversible decay and such (you make that point in the book itself.) Also, I have the feeling Gravitational Cosmology has reached a point where most effort goes into “refining the constants” - was it Hilbert that said that was all that was left to do, right before Quantum Mechanics was introduced? - so a little bombshell discovery would make things very exiting and fresh. Keep it up!
- eecc 4y agoI was mistaken. It wasn’t Hilbert (who had a somewhat similar ambition in Mathematics) but Lord Kelvin. https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/physics/lord-kelvin-and-the-end-of-physics-which-he-never-predicted/amp/ https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/physics/lord-kelvin-...
- ericlerner 4y agoHi, It's really me. The equivalent these days is the term "Precision Cosmology", implying all that's left is the next decimal point. To which I reply: "Precision Cosmology is precisely wrong."