University of New South Wales
Those looking forward to a day when science’s Grand Unifying Theory of Everything could be worn on a t-shirt may have to wait a little longer as astrophysicists continue to find hints that one of the cosmological constants is not so constant after all.
In a paper published in prestigious journal Science Advances, scientists from UNSW Sydney reported that four new measurements of light emitted from a quasar 13 billion light years away reaffirm past studies that have measured tiny variations in the fine structure constant.
UNSW Science’s Professor John Webb says the fine structure constant is a measure of electromagnetism – one of the four fundamental forces in nature (the others are gravity, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force).
“The fine structure constant is the quantity that physicists use as a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force,” Professor Webb says.
“It’s a dimensionless number and it involves the speed of light, something called Planck’s constant and the electron charge, and it’s a ratio of those things. And it’s the number that physicists use to measure the strength of the electromagnetic force.”
The electromagnetic force keeps electrons whizzing around a nucleus in every atom of the universe – without it, all matter would fly apart. Up until recently, it was believed to be an unchanging force throughout time and space. But over the last two decades, Professor Webb has noticed anomalies in the fine structure constant whereby electromagnetic force measured in one particular direction of the universe seems ever so slightly different.
“We found a hint that that number of the fine structure constant was different in certain regions of the universe. Not just as a function of time, but actually also in direction in the universe, which is really quite odd if it’s correct…but that’s what we found.”
LOOKING FOR CLUES
Ever the sceptic, when Professor Webb first came across these early signs of slightly weaker and stronger measurements of the electromagnetic force, he thought it could be a fault of the equipment, or of his calculations or some other error that had led to the unusual readings. It was while looking at some of the most distant quasars – massive celestial bodies emitting exceptionally high energy – at the edges of the universe that these anomalies were first observed using the world’s most powerful telescopes.
“The most distant quasars that we know of are about 12 to 13 billion light years from us,” Professor Webb says.
“So if you can study the light in detail from distant quasars, you’re studying the properties of the universe as it was when it was in its infancy, only a billion years old. The universe then was very, very different. No galaxies existed, the early stars had formed but there was certainly not the same population of stars that we see today. And there were no planets.”
He says that in the current study, the team looked at one such quasar that enabled them to probe back to when the universe was only a billion years old which had never been done before. The team made four measurements of the fine constant along the one line of sight to this quasar. Individually, the four measurements didn’t provide any conclusive answer as to whether or not there were perceptible changes in the electromagnetic force. However, when combined with lots of other measurements between us and distant quasars made by other scientists and unrelated to this study, the differences in the fine structure constant became evident.
A WEIRD UNIVERSE
“And it seems to be supporting this idea that there could be a directionality in the universe, which is very weird indeed,” Professor Webb says.
“So the universe may not be isotropic in its laws of physics – one that is the same, statistically, in all directions. But in fact, there could be some direction or preferred direction in the universe where the laws of physics change, but not in the perpendicular direction. In other words, the universe in some sense, has a dipole structure to it.
“In one particular direction, we can look back 12 billion light years and measure electromagnetism when the universe was very young. Putting all the data together, electromagnetism seems to gradually increase the further we look, while towards the opposite direction, it gradually decreases. In other directions in the cosmos, the fine structure constant remains just that – constant. These new very distant measurements have pushed our observations further than has ever been reached before.”
In other words, in what was thought to be an arbitrarily random spread of galaxies, quasars, black holes, stars, gas clouds and planets – with life flourishing in at least one tiny niche of it – the universe suddenly appears to have the equivalent of a north and a south. Professor Webb is still open to the idea that somehow these measurements made at different stages using different technologies and from different locations on Earth are actually a massive coincidence.
“This is something that is taken very seriously and is regarded, quite correctly with scepticism, even by me, even though I did the first work on it with my students. But it’s something you’ve got to test because it’s possible we do live in a weird universe.”
But adding to the side of the argument that says these findings are more than just coincidence, a team in the US working completely independently and unknown to Professor Webb’s, made observations about X-rays that seemed to align with the idea that the universe has some sort of directionality.
“I didn’t know anything about this paper until it appeared in the literature,” he says.
“And they’re not testing the laws of physics, they’re testing the properties, the X-ray properties of galaxies and clusters of galaxies and cosmological distances from Earth. They also found that the properties of the universe in this sense are not isotropic and there’s a preferred direction. And lo and behold, their direction coincides with ours.”
LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING
While still wanting to see more rigorous testing of ideas that electromagnetism may fluctuate in certain areas of the universe to give it a form of directionality, Professor Webb says if these findings continue to be confirmed, they may help explain why our universe is the way it is, and why there is life in it at all.
“For a long time, it has been thought that the laws of nature appear perfectly tuned to set the conditions for life to flourish. The strength of the electromagnetic force is one of those quantities. If it were only a few per cent different to the value we measure on Earth, the chemical evolution of the universe would be completely different and life may never have got going. It raises a tantalising question: does this ‘Goldilocks’ situation, where fundamental physical quantities like the fine structure constant are ‘just right’ to favour our existence, apply throughout the entire universe?”
If there is a directionality in the universe, Professor Webb argues, and if electromagnetism is shown to be very slightly different in certain regions of the cosmos, the most fundamental concepts underpinning much of modern physics will need revision.
“Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions,” he says.
“That standard model itself is built upon Einstein’s theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics.”
Professor Webb’s team believe this is the first step towards a far larger study exploring many directions in the universe, using data coming from new instruments on the world’s largest telescopes. New technologies are now emerging to provide higher quality data, and new artificial intelligence analysis methods will help to automate measurements and carry them out more rapidly and with greater precision.
###
People want to believe. However, science is, with cause, a philosophy and practice in the near-frame.
Our limited history of measurement of the gravitational constant is also points to it not being constant either. The constancy of all the “constants” is nothing but a simplistic assumption.
It would be much more logical to question these assumptions of constancy than to start inventing all the black matter, energy and fairy dust holding the universe together and spuriously hypothesising lumps of it wherever you need to make you equations work.
At least there are some out there ready to question the orthodoxy instead of making up fairly tales.
What about the supposed theory that simply looking at something changes it?
I am in awe of people like Professor Webb but really quite pleased I am only a simple peasant! 🤔
“What about the supposed theory that simply looking at something changes it?”
I can top that. As engineering students at Purdue, my friend Kurt Sacksteder and I discovered that the very act of our answering a professor’s question to the class automatically made that answer wrong (even if it had been right up to that point). The “Kelly-Sacksteder Effect” was so consistent that we stopped answering questions in class for fear of destroying the universe.
Your story reminds me of Murphy’s Constant. Murphy’s Constant is the number you multiply your answer by to get the answer in the back of the book–not that all answers in the back of the book are automatically correct.
Jim
We called that Finagle’s constant.
Occam rules.
And so does Kuhn. One keeps adding parameters until a paradigm shift allows a new simpler way to look at things.
The whole point of Science and especially physics is to apply the principle of time and space invariant Natural Laws – theAeterna Veritas – and then ‘discover’ them – or rather invent them – to fit the known ‘facts’.
Bit of a bugger if they have to be time or space variant. Almost as bad as Einstein bending space to allow for matter, or was it the bending of space that caused matter? Awfully hard to say with these Boffins, which came first, the Boffin or the Egg?…
the egg … always the egg
To all atheists & agnostics who think this validates their position: you just discovered that all science is premised upon ideas that are false or, at best, serious over-simplified and your response is to have greater confidence in science? That’s the epitome of blind faith.
In other words, not only did the universe have to be finely-tuned for life, it had to be finely-tuned IN THE RIGHT PLACE AND TIME! And you think that’s MORE proof of randomness? At best, you’ve added another variable, which makes chance even LESS likely as you’d have to multiply the pre-existing chance of randomly-generated life by the chance of this new variable, thereby DECREASING the probability of your explanation. Literally, there are only three possible explanations of life: 1) universal laws require it (which no one believes), 2) chance created it, or 3) intelligence created it. How does adding new variables help the 2nd hypothesis? News flash: it doesn’t. It’s not more spins of the wheel or rolls of the dice, it’s yet another variable (at least) that has to be fine-tuned. Give up! Logic and the evidence require #3 as the only REASONABLE explanation.
“Literally, there are only three possible explanations of life: 1) universal laws require it (which no one believes). . .”
First of all, ‘belief’ is not a part of the scientific method.
Second of all, I think your number 1 is quite plausible. Given the right materials, and the right inputs of energy, I suspect nature has a tendency toward increasing complexity, ultimately resulting in life. It doesn’t require any variety of Creationism.
The position of this atheist is validated by this and this alone: the entire absence of ANY evidence whatsoever to support the existence of a conscious creator. The difficulty of explaining the nature of the universe, or the fact of its complexity – to put it another way – proves nothing in the direction you have in mind. You’ve started with your own, very personal belief/perspective on the world – supported by what precisely I have to ask – and seem to believe that the complications we perceive from our very limited capacity are some kind of evidence that supports your position. There is no such dependence/connection. That things aren’t quite as we expected is not evidence of a creator; it’s evidence of the limits of our understanding/knowledge and intellectual capacity. Basically your premise translates into: we don’t understand it, or we’ve been surprised by this, therefore a supernatural explanation must be the answer. Absurd. As are the external foundations of religious belief. The internal (within the mind) is where the explanation lies.
There is nothing out there that we are yet aware of that conclusively or even tentatively supports your position in any way. All that we see and understand at present is devoid of supernatural content and is gradually being explained inch by inch by evidence and logic. That process is ongoing. Anyone who thought we’d reached the end of the learning process didn’t understand the concept of the evolution of knowledge, or was arrogant or ignorant. We will continue to encounter surprises, to learn that parts of our previous understanding were faulty, for as long as we inhabit this planet. It’s the nature of authentic progress.
Religion keeps its grip unfortunately but the history of humankind is marked by an ever increasing reliance on logic and evidence, and the abandonment of superstition. If we are to continue to advance as a species then that progress must continue.
As for the necessity of the various balances for the existence of life as we know it, that only applies to . . .life as we know it. Other balances would almost certainly produce other life solutions, or none. The universe doesn’t need us. It does not exist as a platform for humans or any kind of life. It exists because it exists, and surely always has.
As for directionality and variations in constants, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we learn in time that the universe is rotating and has directional momentum. In fact I’d be exceedingly surprised if it didn’t have both. . The notion that the universe is where it all ends, marks the limits of space, seems bizarre to me. In limitless space and time (a convenient construct built on fixed – fairly – qualities of matter) there’ll be room for a few more universes and perhaps bigger structures still, in the same way that planetary systems turn within solar systems which turn withing galaxies which turn within our universe . . . And time, again: it has no objective existence in my view. All we have is never-ending ongoing action according to the laws of cause and effect (we probably have a bit to learn about them too) within infinite space. . .
There will be typos.
Scientific theories rise and fall on the judgements of experiment.
Philosophy is axiomatic.
Science is not philosophy.
So in a galaxy far far away, Darth Vader might use ‘The Force’ after all?
Only a long time ago.
Since this Fine Structure Constant study is from the University of New South Wales, my immediate hypothesis is that the South Magnetic Pole must be wandering all around their facilities, in some way fooz’ling all their measurements.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it..
Probably got their instruments upside down.
ha ha ha Remember the Univ. of S. Wales study of a calved Antarctic iceberg a few years back that was bigger than a breadbox or something and that because it was such an immense new iceberg, this proved that CO2 was driving climate, the Antarctic ice sheet was at risk of imminent collapse, humanity was doomed, and dogs and cats would soon be living together? I might not be remembering all the details correctly, but it was something like that.
I think those USW scientists have been huffing Antarctic ozone.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but I realize that the tone of my previous post is unfair to the scientist mentioned in this article, who may be positing a legitimate question/issue. And besides, those cryo-babies[1] I mentioned may have been from a university in Old Wales in the mother country, not New South Wales in Australia. Although I may have mis-remembered the origins of their credentials, I have no apology for them. I will endeavor to persevere to be more careful when I’m tempted to post snark in the future. Good snark, like good science, must be exact, painfully honest and accurate, and match up with known evidence.
[1] Cryo-baby – a person with an irrational fear of melting glaciers and icecaps which causes him or her to run around crying and screaming and throwing a temper-tantrum. Hi Griff.
Cryo-baby. Hi Griff
Loydo & Simon also waiting for credits.
Just get some tree rings. Everyone knows they are perfect for calibration.
I put it all down to excess CO2 from car engines. Humans are damaging the Universe.
Save the Fine Constant!!!
You might not read this, and if you did you might not understand it. So let me help. If the Universe has a North and South, we need to know. If humans are going to survive we will have to leave Earth. Our Sun will get bigger and hotter as it ages, sucking the Earth into it ( so much for the save the planet kook’s ) so when we leave, we have to go in the right direction !!!!
“That standard model itself is built upon Einstein’s theory of gravity”. They hit the nail on the head. Any model which is built upon Einstein’s theory of gravity is junk science. Therefore the standard model is junk science. Astrophysics is in just as bad a state as climate science is in.
Riiiight… And you have discovered that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is wrong…why?
A theory of gravity is only that, until it is proven correct to the exclusion of competing theories.
I feel blessed and amazed by this article. Blessed that I can log in to WUWT and find utterly absorbing and challenging material like this (Anthony, I wonder if you really understood the scale of the public service you were undertaking when you first began this brilliant blog); and amazement that, during the time that these quasars began emitting light, the material for a planet began to coalesce some 12 to 13 billion light years away, that eventually life began on that newly-formed planet and some four billion years later it had evolved to the stage where creatures could build instruments to detect these esoteric changes.
Now that really is worth thinking about.
Nah, too early in the morning. That’s a second cup of coffee thought.
John,
I couldn’t agree more, both about WUWT and the wonder and mystery of the universe we find ourselves inhabiting. During the present time of fear and uncertainty they are both more important than ever.
I just watched a new two hour documentary about Mars from National Geographic. It’s definitely worth watching – it has many new images of Mars that I had never seen before and which are truly extraordinary. It also previews Mars 2020 which will – hopefully – have the best chance of finding signs of ancient life on Mars. Truly, despite the virus, we live in wonderful times.
Another big plus: despite being on National Geographic there wasn’t a hint of any climate change nonsense!
Chris
“Another big plus: despite being on National Geographic there wasn’t a hint of any climate change nonsense!”
I’m not sure that means they have lost their zealotry for human-caused climate change, it probably just means they can’t make a case for CO2 putting any warmth into the atmosphere of Mars, so they can’t make a comparison between Mars and the Earth in that sense.
I had to cancel my subscription to National Geographic many moons ago because they just went on and on about the fake crisis of human-caused climate change. I couldn’t take it anymore.
…and yet here we are with a brand new “viral pandemic” making accurate assessments, producing and providing accurate testing equipment, moving to Stage II on a “safe & efficacious” vaccine all within mere months of the virus’s discovery!
It’s so refreshing to see the most revered scientists in the world swallow their pride and be forced to question every bold assertion they’ve ever made. However, their massively inflated egos will still fly high outside of the scientific community because 99.99% world’s people will never hear of science’s lack of absolute authority in knowledge…especially when it pertains to political policies and motivations.
John V. Wright
April 28, 2020 at 11:00 pm
Yes John, well said.
Anthony has done us a great service over all these years and it’s nice to have some relief from news of Covid-19 and AGW for a change.
Something pleasant and truly exciting to muse on for a change.
I hope the string theory and dark matter/energy enthusiasts take note of this and consider that they too might just possibly be wrong. Surely having to constantly add these band-aids to their Grand Theories to make everything fit suggests that just maybe the underlying theories could be wrong.
Michael Mann and colleagues take note.
Good scientists take it for granted that they could always be wrong.
Great scientists work to prove it. (Before someone else can.)
If they want to put something on a tee shirt evidently you can put Pi there. Pi contains the number sequence describing every phenomena possible in the universe.
Well, say, the Euler number, “e” is deeply connected to pi, but quite a different number in itself, it’s pretty good too! And how about that “golden ratio” thing some people get all gaga about?
Now, I surmise that if this physics thing, the ‘fine structure constant’, were *exactly* a multiple of pi (or something) that would surely get people going! As it is, the ‘Constant’ is apparently roughly (but not exactly) equal to 137. No one knows how to derive the exact number from pi, or from anything that basic in math. So, rather than just accept it as a found constant in nature, people theorize about it varying slightly over time — makes it seem less arbitrary, I guess.
I was led to believe by “The Science” that CO2 was responsible for every phenomenon in the universe 😮
It’s not CO2 it’s “42”
CO42 ?
Well that explains it then. No wonder we’re in trouble.
Jackie Robinson did it?
“Every phenomenon” or “all pehnomena”.
And pehnomena are even worse than phenomena.
Equilibrium became upset when Tump was elected. Unified theory now out the window.
Some people have problems even understanding the very basic facts of nature:
http://phzoe.com/2020/04/29/the-irrelevance-of-geothermal-heat-flux/
Yes.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/28/the-hot-and-cold-of-space/#comment-2927380
Hi retard,
I have two videos refuting your religion here:
http://phzoe.com/2020/02/20/two-theories-one-ideological-other-verified/
I suggest you conform your views to observations.
Now that’s irony.
Now that’s someone who never read the post.
Okay, a science article about fundamental physics should never describe electrons as “whizzing around” the nucleus.
That said, it seems space is “scrunching” and relaxing in a way we normally attribute to matter and curvature. It seems even space that is devoid of matter and energy can be curved more than expected (currently explained as dark matter) and some space is curved less than expected (currently explained as dark energy).
It seems “nothing” has structure we are not currently equipped to describe and we play with constants to work it back in. It will be an exciting day when we learn how that structure chnges.
“It seems even space that is devoid of matter and energy can be curved more than expected (currently explained as dark matter) and some space is curved less than expected (currently explained as dark energy).”
That is a very interesting observation, kind of like saying that Dark Matter and Dark Energy are opposite sides of the same coin.
Having at least 3 unknowns a major problem to work out what’s changing the results. Is it a problem relative to our point of observation or just some dark secret? (half pun intended).
I am amazed there is still any doubt about the golden constant, it was known a while back? It is clearly 42 as documented and confirmed, when the number of turtles “all the way down” was counted, coming to 42, with each turtle being just 42x larger than the preceding one. 🙂
You have the saying wrong.
It is Models all the way down..
All human knowledge is models. The world we think we live in, is a model. Science is a set of models oft the model we think we live in.
Meanwhile Whatever Is The Case, is what it is, and cares not.
In common with transmission lines, space has something called characteristic impedance. Because there’s no material in space, it doesn’t suffer from the kinds of effects that beset signals in physical media and the atmosphere. Suppose that assumption is wrong though.
I wonder if dark matter, whatever that is, can affect the transmission of signals. There is this thing called group velocity which has the effect of smearing modulated signals and reducing the bandwidth of a path. Could it be that, over light year distances, it is impossible to send information at any useful bit rate? Is SETI barking up the wrong tree? Anyway, the concept of aether appears not to be as dead as I was led to believe when I was a pup.
If we could somehow send a signal with faster than light group velocity, I suppose the bandwidth would be zero on that as well. So you could have unlimited speed of signal translation, but with zero bandwidth mind you?
That could even be a really lame ‘superhero’ mind power, sending zero information infinitely fast..
Actually, the world isn’t sitting on the back of a giant Turtle, and I don’t care that it is written that way in Pratchett’s Discworld stories. The real story is that if the laboratory rats, those Secret Masters of our world, say that the meaning of the universe is “42” then it must be so! Say, maybe they have reasons for fomenting alarm and busting the world’s economy too?
Mice!! Read the books.
Pandimensional, white mice…..
Pinky and the Brain
Since the constancy c of the speed of light in a vacuum results from the principle of causality, I hope it still holds here on Earth, otherwise the causality principle collapses and some might be tempted to argue that the lockdown could have had an effect on events which occurred before it was applied.
/s
Er what?
There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
Electric Universe : 1
Standard Universe : 0
We’re all in trouble if that electric universe runs on renewable energy…
It is solar powered, apparently….
There are two things that worry me about this kind of result. First that it is essentially based on a meta analysis, combining many different studies. It is well known that ‘significant’ findings from those usually turn out to be spurious. The second is the result itself. Why are these changes always so small? Why always a 0.00… % change and not a nice juicy 5% one; after all 13 billion years is 95% of the life time of the universe. It’s as if Nature is playing peek-a-boo with us: I am changeable but you will never be able to tell it. I do believe that Nature is subtle, even devious, but it is not malicious. I therefore don’t buy it (yet).
Historically, this is how we discover new phenomena and develop rules to model them. Newton’s world was easily observable with simple equipment. It took until the late 1800’s for precise data of things not quite following Newton’s laws to be available to lead to the next, more refined set of rules. Now we are observing exceptions to those laws. As with relativity and quantum theory, the changes decsribed were not huge, but the implications behind them were. Who will be the next Einstein and Plank to develop the new set of rules?
Ed Zuiderwijk
And how about the quote:
“The most distant quasars that we know of are about 12 to 13 billion light years from us,” Professor Webb says.
Are “about”! I would, in his shoes, be amazed that the values for c were so damn close. Maybe the temperature varied by half a degree in his laboratory or his observatory. Are these optical telescopes? Was the earth moving toward or away from the quasar on its orbit during observation?…
The Central Party Climatariat has put me into deep scepticism mode from which I may never return!
And if “constants” aren’t, how do we know they are 13 billion light years away? After all, the distance measurement is based on a red-shift theory that relies on the constancy of the speed of light through empty space. We can not even begin to construct a telescope with a large enough baseline to measure interstellar space with parallax angles. The one pixel on the display that represents a star is only 10-23 arcseconds displaced between measurements 6 months apart (2 AU baseline) and our equipment is only able to discern ~20 orders of magnitude less.
superscript didn’t work. that was maybe better expressed as 10E-23 as it is on calculators.
“I do believe that Nature is subtle, even devious, but it is not malicious.”
That’s what Nature wants you to think.
The electromagnetic signal, radio, x-rays, light or whatever modern telescopes are detecting, after travelling through a constantly varying space-time properties (creation and drifting of galaxies, dark matter, black holes, if there are such things) for 11-12 billions of light years, was exposed to numerous phase shifts between it’s components, e.g. em signal ‘colour’ aberration. What is currently observed is most unlikely to be an ‘unadulterated’ signal that left this by now long gone primordial quasar.
+42 :<)
Yes,
Remembering how not too long ago the observatory in Antarctica had evidence of polarization in the CBR. Then, I think someone demonstrated that dust could produce the same results
This is no surprise to me, I don’t like the currently failing explanation for red-shift IE Doppler effect. Red shift could also be due to the permeability of free space not being a constant over time and/or space. I think this is a much more likely explanation. If the fine constant is not a constant then from what I understand the permeability of free space isn’t either.
Everything in the Universe is spinning. Everything seems to have angular momentum.
So why the surprise that the Universe itself has an axis? So it came into being with angular momentum, what’s strange about that?
It’s spinning relative to something outside (potential universe, for instance) and thus the universe has a notable direction – the axis.
It’s probably spinning in the dimension of time too. That explains why we get 1, 2, 3 (or 3, 2, 1) and not 1, 2, a, b, hatstand.
M Courtney. Brilliant! I’d never thought of this, but it certainly has to be one of the most obvious truths about the Universe. Everything is spinning, from atoms (even electrons) to star systems, to galaxies to clusters of galaxies… I’ve never heard mention whether there is a preferred ‘direction’ of spin, probably not or we would be out of some form of mechanical balance (large rotating machines in a plant need foundations designed to prevent the machine from flipping itself over).
I think in light of this wonderful observation of MC, that the entire universe itself most probably is spinning, with an angular momentum equal to the mathematical sum (+/-) of individual spinning parts. Indeed, how can the idea of an axis of the universe not been an early thought.
When I first heard about the search for other intelligent life in the universe and heard that researchers were surprised that planets rotating around stars were commonplace, I was surprised that they were surprised. Niels Bohr came up with the structure of the atom when he dreamed about the solar system.
it also helps explain why amino acids above the universal equator are “right-handed”.
(we reside below the universal equator)
In reply to:
“Everything seems to have angular momentum.”
Why? What generates Angular Momentum? And what is spinning?
The Spiral Galaxy Angular Momentum Paradox
The Big Bang theory assumes angular momentum (how fast a galaxy rotations) is made physically by the velocity difference of gas clouds when the spiral galaxy first forms.
As there is a physical limit to how fast and how slow a gas cloud could statistically move in relation to another…
Think of the Big bang mechanism which just creates a large number of clouds of gas. Those clouds must form the galaxies. But there are two different main type of galaxies: Spiral and Elliptical. Why one rather than the other?
What we would expect if differential gas cloud speed determined galaxy angular momentum is that all spiral galaxies spin rate would be similar and there would be a sharp drop off in spin rates slower or faster than the average spin rate which would in turn be would be determined by the average difference in torque generated when the galaxy formed.
What is found observationally is….
Spiral galaxies as they become more massive,…
… they are gaining, angular momentum from some unknown force or mechanism that increases angular momentum in proportion to the galaxy’s mass.
As Disney notes in his and other’s paper, the big bang theory cannot produce the angular momentum observed in large spiral galaxies and cannot produce increasing angular momentum with increasing galaxy mass.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0811/0811.1554.pdf
William, 90% theory can’t produce such certainty and such a detailed biography of the Universe. We have been observing a 13Blybp(?) universe for 100 years, with more serious observation tech only a few decades old. Dark Matter and Dark Energy are speculative patches that were vulcanized on to preserve deficient theory (think epicycles and phlogiston).
We only think that the quasars we see are the farthest away or even far away at all. Could we see one 26Bly away if it were there. Perhaps all that Dark Matter limits the view. We can’t logically add a patch where we need it and then forget about it.
Its all very interesting this cosmology stuff and I believe we should do it, but this is going to be a long term project before we can feel we’ve aced it. The one thing we do know with most certainty is stuff spins – electrons, atoms, stars and their planets, galaxies of stars, including your elliptical galaxies, and a reasonable speculation would be that such a Universe would likely spin, too. It would all come to an end if it stopped spinning.
Was thinking the same thing. In your case, the universe is 26 BY old. Then observing something 12 BY away is looking at the universe only half its lifetime ago, not at the beginning. I suspect one day not too far off, we will have the telescope/energy sensing equipment to do just that.
The “everything spins” concept also seems to be not unreasonable.
My theory is that each galaxy within the universe would be subject to fluid dynamics and the ideal gas law. As such, these galaxies would be subject to different spin rates and different shapes depending on the gaseous content when formed. Just my two cents.
Almost certainly true, and it should have been an obvious possibility to any thinking individual. The time dimension part? Don’t think so. Space + action covers it all imv. I believe that time has no objective existence. It’s a device of our devising for making sense of things; to give order to everyday life.
How refreshing. A scientist notices something but is skeptical of their findings.
Contrast that with the “scientists” who claim to have detected a 0.01K increase in the deep ocean and know it’s true.
But, but, but, ACCEPTED SCIENCE!!! A survey of streetsweepers said that 97% think constants are constant.
We have much to learn. Only idiots and Mickey Mann think they know it all, but that is being redundant.
In a limited frame of reference (i.e. scientific), they can be reasonably estimated as “constant” or rather characterized by a single, repeatable probabilistic distribution.
The second is the result itself. Why are these changes always so small? Why always a 0.00… % change and not a nice juicy 5% one; after all 13 billion years is 95% of the life time of the universe.
Because if it were 5% we would have noticed it years ago.
Next?