Science James Webb telescope confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe - Aether theory boys is this our moment?

Source: https://www.livescience.com/space/c...-wrong-with-our-understanding-of-the-universe
Archive: https://archive.is/363nM

James Webb telescope confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe​


News - By Ben Turner - published March 14, 2024
Depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at different rates. Now, scientists using the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes have confirmed that the observation is not down to a measurement error.

Astronomers have used the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes to confirm one of the most troubling conundrums in all of physics — that the universe appears to be expanding at bafflingly different speeds depending on where we look.

This problem, known as the Hubble Tension, has the potential to alter or even upend cosmology altogether. In 2019, measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the puzzle was real; in 2023, even more precise measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cemented the discrepancy.

Now, a triple-check by both telescopes working together appears to have put the possibility of any measurement error to bed for good. The study, published February 6 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that there may be something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe.

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"With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility we have misunderstood the universe," lead study author Adam Riess, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, said in a statement.

Reiss, Saul Perlmutter and Brian P. Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for their 1998 discovery of dark energy, the mysterious force behind the universe's accelerating expansion.

Currently, there are two "gold-standard" methods for figuring out the Hubble constant, a value that describes the expansion rate of the universe. The first involves poring over tiny fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — an ancient relic of the universe's first light produced just 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

Between 2009 and 2013, astronomers mapped out this microwave fuzz using the European Space Agency's Planck satellite to infer a Hubble constant of roughly 46,200 mph per million light-years, or roughly 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc).

The second method uses pulsating stars called Cepheid variables. Cepheid stars are dying, and their outer layers of helium gas grow and shrink as they absorb and release the star's radiation, making them periodically flicker like distant signal lamps.

As Cepheids get brighter, they pulsate more slowly, giving astronomers a means to measure their absolute brightness. By comparing this brightness to their observed brightness, astronomers can chain Cepheids into a "cosmic distance ladder" to peer ever deeper into the universe's past. With this ladder in place, astronomers can find a precise number for its expansion from how the Cepheids' light has been stretched out, or red-shifted.

But this is where the mystery begins. According to Cepheid variable measurements taken by Riess and his colleagues, the universe's expansion rate is around 74 km/s/Mpc: an impossibly high value when compared to Planck's measurements. Cosmology had been hurled into uncharted territory.

"We wouldn't call it a tension or problem, but rather a crisis," David Gross, a Nobel Prize-winning astronomer, said at a 2019 conference at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) in California.

Initially, some scientists thought that the disparity could be a result of a measurement error caused by the blending of Cepheids with other stars in Hubble's aperture. But in 2023, the researchers used the more accurate JWST to confirm that, for the first few "rungs" of the cosmic ladder, their Hubble measurements were right. Nevertheless, the possibility of crowding further back in the universe's past remained.

To resolve this issue, Riess and his colleagues built on their previous measurements, observing 1,000 more Cepheid stars in five host galaxies as remote as 130 million light-years from Earth. After comparing their data to Hubble's, the astronomers confirmed their past measurements of the Hubble constant.

"We've now spanned the whole range of what Hubble observed, and we can rule out a measurement error as the cause of the Hubble Tension with very high confidence," Riess said. "Combining Webb and Hubble gives us the best of both worlds. We find that the Hubble measurements remain reliable as we climb farther along the cosmic distance ladder."

In other words: the tension at the heart of cosmology is here to stay.


Ed. Note - The comments section
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Nothing is instantaneous about pushing a stick because you are applying force to the stick atoms that all push each other in a direction until making contact with the wall and repelling. There’s been engineering experiments on YouTube before measuring the delay of this phenomenon. Light is a similar concept as it’s both wave and particle so it must be directed and takes time to travel.
And there's the practical level response to @Otterly 's question, to compliment the theoretical one.

As overly serious says, because both frames of reference - the start and stop - of the stick are both real and both 'correct', you will also have sent energy that arrives before it has actually left. If you had a second stick and asked for it to be poked back at you when the end of your stick moves, you will have the odd effect of that second stick poking you, before you poked it. If you agreed that when the second stick pokes you, you won't push on your stick you then run into the issue of paradox.
If I may, this is the bit where you are most likely to lose people. If you would like to connect the physicist frame of reference to the layperson frame of reference by some stick of explanation, I would suggest this would be the place to do so. Can you expand on the second stick pokes first?
 
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Nothing is instantaneous about pushing a stick because you are applying force to the stick atoms that all push each other in a direction until making contact with the wall and repelling. There’s been engineering experiments on YouTube before measuring the delay of this phenomenon. Light is a similar concept as it’s both wave and particle so it must be directed and takes time to travel.
Is there any construct that could be infinitely rigid? Not even necessarily matter..?
Fundamentally they are not different things; you are propagating energy through a medium.
Makes sense
When you say infinitely rigid, what you are saying is that the energy - in this case mechanical compression wave through the material - has no speed limit. In reality it's the speed of sound in that material.
Right, that’s the answer I was looking for then. The stick cannot be infinitely rigid.
Thank you. That’s been on my mind for a few decades. I have asked people who should know and they didn’t.
 
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And there's the practical level response to @Otterly 's question, to compliment the theoretical one.


If I may, this is the bit where you are most likely to lose people. If you would like to connect the physicist frame of reference to the layperson frame of reference by some stick of explanation, I would suggest this would be the place to do so. Can you expand on the second stick pokes first?
Lets assume you have the two sticks. You and Otterly both start at the same end. Otterly stays where she is, you get on a rocket and zip to the end at the exact speed of light. To you, this journey happens instantly, your watch reads the exact same time as you got on the rocket and it shot away, as it does when the rocket arrives. To Otterly 10 years have passed - in reality she is dead. Ten billion trillion infinite years have passed and the universe is over lol - since you set off and arrived.

Both of these are true. You arrive at the other end instantly to you and in ten years to Otterly. You push the second stick only a few minutes after you left Otterly. Since this stick is instantly sending information, you poke it, it pokes Otterly. But which one? Your frame of reference is that you have only been gone a few minutes. In her frame of reference it took you ten years to get there.

Essentially the sticks are FTL spaceships in this sense. If you hopped in one, FTL'd to another galaxy and then returned. You would arrive back home before you ever left as your reference frame is just as 'real' as the reference frame you departed and the one you arrive at.
 
A bigger universe means potentially more retards to laugh at

Somewhere out there there's an autistic alien obsessed with something that we'd find hilarious.

Another expansive grand cosmic explosion? It would be funny if it was discovered one day the universe hit a bump in the road and just started colliding with another universe, also trying to infinitely expand.

I've read that one will absorb the other. Let's hope we're the eaters and not the eaten.
 
Wait Otterly is a woman? I sort of assumed but always considered her an honorary man and doctor and part otter.
I am yes. I’m not a medical doctor, im the useless type. And clearly should have paid better attention in physics as a young ‘un.
Sh's a primark enjoyer.
Can’t beat a bit of primark. They’re not as good as they used to be though.
You would arrive back home before you ever left as your reference frame is just as 'real' as the reference frame you departed and the one you arrive at.
The universe is very very odd isn’t it? Although I suppose it has no reason to be understandable to us. The more Bob and Alice type stuff like this I read the less I feel I intuitively ‘get’ it
 
Can’t beat a bit of primark. They’re not as good as they used to be though.
They have gone downhill, boys clothes especially. I got some for my brothers birthday and they're already looking tattered after a few months of light wear, sad.
The universe is very very odd isn’t it? Although I suppose it has no reason to be understandable to us. The more Bob and Alice type stuff like this I read the less I feel I intuitively ‘get’ it
It's very unintuitive. Frustratingly so lol. We're used to the world being very - for lack of a better term - solid, when in reality, even our telecoms satellites need to account for the impact of relativity, or our GPS would stop working within a few years.
 
Another expansive grand cosmic explosion? It would be funny if it was discovered one day the universe hit a bump in the road and just started colliding with another universe, also trying to infinitely expand.
Well there is the holographic universe theory in which two universes are expanding into each other and matter is the intersecting waves. I have always been fond of that for aesthetic reasons. Which admittedly, is the second worst reason for valuing a theory there is.
I’m not a medical doctor, im the useless type.
There is more overlap than you think!

I am yes.
She also didn't snicker at the phrase "infinitely rigid" as I am now doing. Which doesn't mean you are a woman, but does tend to mean you are not a boy.

It's very unintuitive. Frustratingly so lol. We're used to the world being very - for lack of a better term - solid, when in reality, even our telecoms satellites need to account for the impact of relativity, or our GPS would stop working within a few years.
Maybe it's intuitive from, forgive me, the right frame of reference. From my point of view outside my computer, it's perfectly sensible why a CPU register only contains 16 bits, another 32 bits. To the CPU it's some arbitrary stepping like quantum levels of electrons - it goes up by X or down by Y but never ends up at 1.2Y. It's as arbitrary as the Planck constant.

Could the speed of light just be the necessary level of precision required? Einstein said that "God does not play dice". But perhaps He uses an out of order scheduler for Dwarf Fortress. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
I am however of the general opinion that anytime your equation spits out 'infinite lol' when given finite parameters, you fucked up, so Tiplers cylinder probably would not work..
I've heard it said best that "infinity" in physics is the modern equivalent of "here be dragons". It only really means "we don't understand it yet".
 
Why isnt this message being transmitted faster than light from where I am to the person at the other end, even though the pole itself is moving back and forth slower than light?
Because there is no such thing as totally rigid. Even though when you swing a pole, the motion of the other end seems instant, it's actually traveling in a wave down the length of the pole. It's just that any relativistic effects are virtually undetectable.

It is, according to some models, possible to use quantum entanglement of two particles to transmit something faster than light, because determining the status of one somehow resolves both of their statuses simultaneously, what Einstein somewhat contemptuously called "spooky action at a distance." I think most actual scientists reject the idea of using this for communication.
 
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I don’t know where I first read about it but when I did it made a lot of sense to me that the universe was torus shaped. It explains why the universe isn’t expanding evenly in all directions and proposes that the universe may not actually be expanding but only appears to be because space-time dynamically flows with the geometry of a torus. So the universe may be simultaneously expanding and contracting in a closed loop, stretching at the top where space-time emerges from the centre of the torus, and contracting at the bottom where space-time flows back into the centre. There are infinite Big Bangs and Big Crunches, I can’t remember the theory but black holes had a lot to do with the Big Crunch aspect of it.

Mmmmmmm... Giant Universe donut...........
 
I am however of the general opinion that anytime your equation spits out 'infinite lol' when given finite parameters, you fucked up, so Tiplers cylinder probably would not work..
Infinities can pop up in mundane situations, for example, gas mileage is distance traveled divided by fuel consumed so if you traveled 200 miles with 10 gallons of gas you have a gas mileage of 20 mpg. Now, what gas mileage do you have if your car is turned off but you're going downhill? Infinity mpg? You can trivially overcome this issue by changing units and simply declaring you consume 0 gallons per mile.
It is, according to some models, possible to use quantum entanglement of two particles to transmit something faster than light, because determining the status of one somehow resolves both of their statuses simultaneously, what Einstein somewhat contemptuously called "spooky action at a distance." I think most actual scientists reject the idea of using this for communication.
I don't see how you'd do it. You can't control the spin of the observed particle nor can you know when the other party observed their particle, hell, you can't even know if the other party has observed it yet, therefore, you can't encode a string of bits using the spin of the particles themselves nor can you use them as an analogue to morse code and time their observation. Entangled particles give you as much communication as a separated pair of shoes, you'll only know the other got the remaining shoe.
 
I don't see how you'd do it. You can't control the spin of the observed particle nor can you know when the other party observed their particle, hell, you can't even know if the other party has observed it yet, therefore, you can't encode a string of bits using the spin of the particles themselves nor can you use them as an analogue to morse code and time their observation. Entangled particles give you as much communication as a separated pair of shoes, you'll only know the other got the remaining shoe.
That's correct, quantum entanglement can only get you faster than light communication if you already have faster than light communication. It can get you faster than light coordination, but it's of marginal usefulness.
 
Entangled particles give you as much communication as a separated pair of shoes, you'll only know the other got the remaining shoe.
The probably bogus hypothesis is you could use this to transmit a series of bits of this sort and actually send a message. This does not conform with current understanding. I love the idea of FTL but we have nothing resembling it in reality.
 
So question for the physics aficionados from the layman here, popular science articles give me(again the uneducated layman) mixed signals. Is the standard model on its way out or has any alternative like string theory basically been put to bed?

As I understand it, quantum gravity is where all the enthusiasm is now, when string theory was the rage a decade and two ago.

So are we closer to a GUT, or is it more spinning the wheels?
 
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Is the standard model on its way out or has any alternative like string theory basically been put to bed?

As I understand it, quantum gravity is where all the enthusiasm is now, when string theory was the rage a decade and two ago.

So are we closer to a GUT, or is it more spinning the wheels?
Theories abound but there is no satisfactory replacement of the Standard Model.

We know the Standard Model (SD) has to be incomplete because 1) the very famous problem of quantum gravity: there is no accounting for gravity in SD. 2) The problem with neutrino mass. We know neutrinos cannot be massless, but their masses cannot be given through the Higgs mechanism. So where does their masses come from? A lot of focus has been given to finding heavy particles in Large Hadron Collider etc, but even if found they would just represent one version of beyond-SD physics, namely Supersymmetry. The energy for GUT has been revised upwards and upwards with hardly an end in slight.

String Theory has had its heyday, and has not be totally fruitless (there are at least two contributions courtesy of String theorizing: one is derivation of black hole entropy from first principle -- in contrast, The (non-String) Bekenstein–Hawking derivation used the assumption that entropy gain by black hole ≥ entropy lost by the rest of the universe. I forgot the second contribution). String Theorists are a very inbred crowd centered on Princeton. And the fame and fortune of the theory depends very largely on how hard they push it.
 
Somewhere out there there's an autistic alien obsessed with something that we'd find hilarious.
Maybe he/she/it is closer than you think. AyyylmaoEarthbuttholemeasurertheleet9000 is currently still trying to send FTL mail to the Galactic University to take his ape-ass fortune telling seriously.
 
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