The Big Bang didn't happen.
In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies... One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!”
Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say. The truth that these papers don’t report is that the hypothesis that the JWST’s images are blatantly and repeatedly contradicting is the Big Bang Hypothesis that the universe began 14 billion years ago in an incredibly hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since. Since that hypothesis has been defended for decades as unquestionable truth by the vast majority of cosmological theorists, the new data is causing these theorists to panic. “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.”
Don't feel too bad. Even Aristotle turned out to be basically wrong about physics, in spite of being the most important physicist of all time. And Newton, and, well, everyone else. You still made a valuable contribution in error, because we can still learn a lot by studying why it was reasonable to think as Aristotle did (and it was -- empirically verifiable, even!). That helps us understand how we progress.
5 comments:
I'll bet what's keeping them awake is that the proxies they've been using to measure things like distance or age are turning out to not be valid as far as they hoped--and they have to figure out where the proxy models break down.
There's also a difference between being wrong and being wrong but close enough for [...] work.
The difference between engineering and theory. The difference between statistics and mathematics. The difference....
Both sides have their place and critical use in understanding Life, the Universe, and everything.
Eric Hines
One of my engineering professors used the following joke to demonstrate what E Hines is explaining.
A physicist, a mathematician, and an engineer are at a dance. Across the room they spot a beautiful woman, and the three are immediately infatuated. The mathematician is too much of a nebbish to approach her, but his buddies begin talking about who's going to go over and talk to her. The mathematician suggests that whoever goes over there should do so by covering half the distance, then half the remaining distance, so on and so forth.
The physicist throws up his hands and says, "Bah! It's impossible! I'll never reach her, so why bother?"
The engineer thinks for a moment and says, "Well, that's true, but I can get close enough to kiss."
My own theory.
Those galaxies are atoms in Gods body.
I have always admired the theory behind the teaching of science and well, everything, at St John's the Great Books college, though I don't know if it is effective in the long run. You are taught the ancients your freshman year. Then that is completely overthrown as you study the Medievals as a sophomore. Junior year is Renaissance through 19th C, and senior year you overthrow it all again and learn the moderns. It seems like good training.
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