Posts by kmarinas86

Gigantic toothless 'DRAGONS' dominated Earth's early skies

Forked over by Chopsticks

So the "dragons" born with forks in their mouth perished, and those born with chopsticks as a mouth thrived. Very interesting. Perhaps there is a relationship to China?

What did you see, Elder Galaxies? What made you age so quickly?

Re: @ Aquatyger

"Singularity = A point in spacetime in which gravitational forces cause matter to have an infinite density and zero volume."

Interestingly, electrons are also assumed to have infinite density and zero volume.

Singularities are perhaps mathematical conveniences (mere "what if" objects dreamed up in thought experiments) or mathematical nightmares (full of infinities and divisions by zero which may indicate fundamental gaps in human knowledge).

However totally exciting, new things could be uncovered by pursing models beyond notion of a singularity. Relatively established examples include "Loop quantum gravity" and "Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble theory of gravity", but there other examples on the verge of acceptance, such as the "Orbitsphere" and "Lamina Disc" models of fundamental particles which are based on overlapping ellipses/circles of charge "elements" enclosing a non-zero, finite volume or area.

The article is justified in flailing its arms about.

"On a more serious note."

"If the model doesn't work that doesn't mean it is broken. It means that we've got definitive evidence that there's more to learn. Ideally, any and all models will be found lacking as we continue to learn about the world around use."

"Models and findings are only broken when they are not improved to reflect new information. At its core, science is about using previously collected information to figure out the next question(s) to ask, not to establish definitive answers. The only science that is definitive and not subject to improvement/change is bad science."

You can be the common, REactive kind of scientist who only tests the dominant theories (e.g. Big Bang, Inflationary Theory) until it fails completely, or you can be the PROactive kind of scientist who, decades before the REactive kind of scientist, tests alongside the dominant theories the lesser acknowledged, alternative models (e.g. Electric Universe, Big Bounce, and Fractal Cosmologies), which in some areas never encounter the speed bumps that the dominant theories are forced to deal with.

The advantage that the REactive scientists have over the PROactive scientists is that they are less likely to be seen as crackpots, are more likely to be published in journals of repute (by other REactive scientists), and more likely to make a living as scientists (i.e. receiving grants and contracts). They are also more conservative with their science, choosing to avoid discussions about existing trailer-sized fusion systems which have already achieved C.O.P.>1, galactic Birkeland currents, electrical discharge on comets, hydrinos, and the abundance of "Holocene impact" events.

In many ways, REactive scientists are like Emmet, the main character in the Lego movie. However, I prefer PROactive scientists such as Barbara McClintock, who are like Lucy from the Lego movie. Not "everything is awesome" about this scientific epoch, specifically in the way it effectively defunds research into major alternatives which require a change of paradigm, forcing them to publish in less reputable journals.

It's funny, because in the end it is likely that the REactive scientists will accept the strange, new ideas as if it was theirs, just like they did with Fritz Zwicky's "Dark Matter", and once again these "Emmets" of the science industry will become the "model" of the proper portrayal of science.

SIGH. It's one thing to evolve the current "epoch" of science, but I have much more interest in the science which takes us closer to the next scientific epoch. Let's emphasize that instead!

Conclusion: Popular excitement of discoveries on this level IS warranted and will put us on a transition to a new scientific epoch, just there had been in the Victorian Era when knowledge of electricity and chemistry grew massively. The article is justified in flailing its arms about and is contributing to this change in the field of cosmology.

Re: Yet another paper made meaningless in popular science coverage... + Re: Run that by me again...

In short, "mad physicist Fiona" is right about the following where she says:

"Because the Universe is constantly expanding, which affects how far the light must travel even while it is en route, and the effect gets ever more pronounced the further away you look. If you take the galaxy in question here it has a redshift of 4. That means we are seeing it as it was 12 billion years ago, because the light has had to travel that many light years. However when that light set off we were only 3 billion light years away. The galaxy itself is now roughly 23.6 billion light years away."

light travel time distance = 12 billion light years = time it took for the image of the galaxies to reach us

angular diameter distance = 3 billion light years = distance the galaxies were when the image began propagating

co-moving distance = 23.6 billion light years = distance the galaxies are when the image reached Earth

These differences in distance are due to expansion not only between the galaxies and the Earth [thus co-moving distance > angular diameter distance], but as well as between the propagating image and the Earth [thus light travel time distance > angular diameter distance].

However, the complaint she is raising is as follows:

- - - - - -

"Yet another paper made meaningless in popular science coverage..."

."..although in this case the error lies squarely with the press office of the Carnegie Institution for Science rather than the re-reporting of it."

"12 billion light years away? That'll be a little over 8 billion years ago then, when the universe was already 5 billion years old and fairly mature, not a mere 1.6 billion years. How did that get through peer review? DID it get through peer review? No: let's have a look at the paper and we see they quote a redshift of 4, which correlates to 12 billion years ago but a distance of almost double that, once you correct for expansion during the interim."

"Sigh. How much work went into this? How many hundreds of thousands of dollars? And then at the final hurdle the publicly announced results are Bowdlerized by some English or Media Studies graduate working at the press office."

- - - - - -

It is very common to report the "light travel time distance" as simply "distance" because most people will relate a "light year" to "the distance that light travels in a single year". Over cosmological spans "the distance that light travels in a single year" isn't uniquely defined because the distance itself affected by the expansion of the universe.

Straight from the press release we find the following sentence, "Fifteen mature galaxies were found at a record-breaking average distance of 12 billion light years, when the universe was just 1.6 billion years old." The Lambda-CDM concordance model puts the age of the universe at 13.798±0.037 billion years based on data gathered from the Planck and WMAP satellites.

If you insist that "distance" refers to "angular diameter distance", you will have a problem saying what is "further" because beyond a redshift of 4 or thereabouts, the "angular diameter distance" actually decreases with increasing "light travel time distance". So taking distance to mean "light travel time distance" is a perfectly sensible thing to do, and it is one that the article does.

If you insist that "distance" refers to "co-moving distance", which appears to me you are because you say, "No: let's have a look at the paper and we see they quote a redshift of 4, which correlates to 12 billion years ago but a distance of almost double that, once you correct for expansion during the interim." then you have to realize that the image does not show these galaxies as they are now, but rather it shows them as they were. At 23.6 billion light years away, the galaxies no longer look like what the image shows, and for all we know they could have merged into an even larger galaxy or black hole!

"12 billion light years away? That'll be a little over 8 billion years ago then, when the universe was already 5 billion years old and fairly mature"

You seem to be inconsistent with your arguments. If 12 billion light years is the "co-moving distance", then yes it would be an image from "8 billion years ago" or "8 billion light years away" when the universe was "5 billion years old", but this is not what they claim. It's not even the same as what you claimed in your following post where you say: "However when that light set off we were only 3 billion light years away. The galaxy itself is now roughly 23.6 billion light years away." Obviously you correct yourself in the second post "Re: Run that by me again...", disproving your own argument that the press release is "wrong".

The "12 billion light years" they talk about does not refer to the "co-moving distance" but rather the "light travel time distance", so it's not an image from "8 billion years ago", but rather it's just as they say "12 billion light years away [= 12 billion years ago]". So therefore, the article is correct, and you are wrong for saying that is wrong. Don't believe me? Look up what the age of the universe is at a "redshift of 4". It's about "1.5 billion years" after the Big Bang, in corroboration with the article, and not with your argument. You know that anyway, based on your comment "Re: Run that by me again...", where you say:

"If you take the galaxy in question here it has a redshift of 4. That means we are seeing it as it was 12 billion years ago, because the light has had to travel that many light years. However when that light set off we were only 3 billion light years away."

Conclusion: The press release is not "made meaningless", and it actually does highlight a significant, cosmological discovery which brings science one step closer to upsetting the apple cart of cosmology.

Signed,

Author of the Cyclic Multiverse Hypothesis