7 ms·
JWST discovers massive and compact quiescent galaxy
- steve_adams_86 3y agoI hadn’t heard of the Einstein Ring before. What a cool feature. It feels very fortunate to be around for all of these discoveries from JWST. It’s a joy to learn so much as a result of articles like these.
- ck2 3y agoIf you want to learn more/why this is one of my favorite series, PBS Space Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgv2WWpm7_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgv2WWpm7_s Just a warning though that each episode starts off gentle but by the end it's like "did I just take a 4th year astrophysics course?"
- rowanseymour 3y agoThe idea of light bending around gravitational fields is so fascinating. I wonder if there's a part of the night sky where some photons that bounced off the earth billions of years ago are being directed back at earth.
- lawlessone 3y agoSag A* is about 26k light years away. So it's not impossible some light from 57k years ago gets turned around.
- throwawaymaths 3y agoPrediction: ER-1 found to have no dark matter
- Magiccupcake 3y agoAlmost certainly the opposite. More massive galaxies tend to form in more massive dark matter halos.
- ccvannorman 3y ago"More massive galaxies tend to form in more massive dark matter halos according to our best current theories." Many believe that MOND may better explain observations, and JWST continues to be a great source of data that may help us update our best models. I believe this commenter was indicating with their prediction that our current theories of dark matter are wrong.
- Magiccupcake 3y agoLast time i looked into MOND it remains relatively unconvincing. The primary reason for this being that it is hard to make the universe look like it should with simulations. We are doing better so far with the lambda-CDM model so far. If someone comes up with a MOND simulation that is better than our current ones it may gain more traction.
- uoaei 3y agoLove it when armchair physicists fly in with their "dark matter is obviously correct" takes.
- sesm 3y ago“Dark matter” is a number of observed phenomena that independently hint at presence of matter not visible by other means, and when estimate can be inferred from observations give roughly the same estimate for the mass of that matter. There is no conventionally accepted explanation of dark matter, but great thing about scientific method is that it aims to capture facts and observations without interpretation. So I stand behind “dark matter is obviously correct”. Although I’m pretty sure that WIMPs are BS.
- uoaei 3y ago
- cgriswald 3y agoIn my fever dreams these galaxies and their theoretical descendants the elliptical galaxies are the result of intelligent life engineering them in a way that is practically required by physics. A sort of natural outcome produced by the inevitable evolution of intelligent life in a galaxy of a certain size. (The evidence for this is essentially negative, fwiw. It’s just a day dream.)
- svieira 3y agoYou might like Count to the Eschaton (starting with Count to a Trillion) by John C. Wright. IFF I'm understanding you correctly, there's a great moment in it that is very much like this fancy.
- cgriswald 3y agoThanks, I always appreciate an apropos recommendation.
- throwaway290 3y agoOr they are a manifestation of conscious life at scales incomprehensible to us.
- cgriswald 3y agoDo you mean like some sort of collective (or galaxy-scale) life?
- throwaway290 3y agoMaybe something more like Wolfram's "intelligence in the universe".
- AlecSchueler 3y agoOr Hinduism's brahma consciousness.
- toddmorey 3y agoI know we all have to make our ends meet, but it's sad when a site like phys.org has such trash ads and newsletter popups.
- irjustin 3y agoThen put your money in - https://sciencex.com/help/donate/ https://sciencex.com/help/donate/
- dfee 3y agoThen they’ll monetize in two places. Why would they stop with the ads?
- irjustin 3y agoParent post is complaining and there's a solution to their specific complaint that supports phys.org. Wasn't talking about the general populous.
- Ensorceled 3y agoThe comment is addressing the "sad" part of the complaint, not the garbage ads part.
- SoftTalker 3y ago"massive and compact" sounds like an oxymoron until you consider that "massive" is being used in its more techically correct meaning of "a lot of mass" rather than its more common/popular usage to mean "large" or "imposing".
- ajuc 3y agoDense would be better?
- kristofferg 3y agoA thing can have low mass and still be dense. :)
- proto_lambda 3y agoYou'd get the opposite problem with "heavy" - correct in layman terms, nonsensical in a scientific context.
- ballenf 3y agoI'm not sure we know much about galaxies' intelligence, outside the Milky Way.
- tromp 3y ago> and its mass is estimated to be 650 billion solar masses One could also say this new galaxy's mass is estimated to be 0.565 Milky Way masses, but for some reason that unit of mass seems not to have caught on...
- otikik 3y agoAs long as we don’t measure length in football fields I won’t get triggered.
- pavlov 3y agoProposal to Rename the Milky Way Galaxy to “the Football Field”
- anotheraccount9 3y agoHow would you go about doing this - just out of curiosity.
- ursuscamp 3y agoHow many kiloyards in width is this new galaxy?
- hexo 3y agoMe neither, as I prefer washing machines over football fields.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
- layer8 3y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37413383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37413383
- juancampa 3y agoSo the galaxy itself is the orange ball in the middle, right? The ring around it is light from another galaxy way further behind being warped by the orange ball?
- xx123xx 3y ago[flagged]