this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
104 points (98.1% liked)
Space
8736 readers
252 users here now
Share & discuss informative content on: Astrophysics, Cosmology, Space Exploration, Planetary Science and Astrobiology.
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions.
- Share relevant content.
- Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
- Use appropriate language and tone.
- Report violations.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
Picture of the Day
The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula
Related Communities
π Science
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
π Engineering
π Art and Photography
Other Cool Links
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Are you sure these aren't old galaxies? Like, how do we know that we aren't in a relatively small little bubble and there's an infinite universe out there where there isn't a single big bang, but instead small bangs that happen every now and then. Maybe if a black hole gets massive enough then its gravity "overflows" and causes it to vomit everything up; and all those bright, fully-formed galaxies are actually unrelated and proceeded the big bang.
We aren't looking at those old galaxies today. Due to the speed of light and the vast distance involved we are looking at the light from those galaxies when they were very young and early in the life of the universe (that's why we are looking there in the first place). That light is just now reaching us. We have theorized about white holes but never seen one. By looking at closer objects we already know what an old galaxy looks like. And nothing can by definition exist before the big bang. Because before the big bang there wasn't any space for things to exist in. Nothing precedes it.
The last three sentences are not quite accurate. It's not necessarily that nothing existed before the the big bang. It's a singularity event where mathematically we can simply not know what existed at/beforehand that moment. It is somewhat comparable with the event horizon of a black hole.
There is something happening/existing, otherwise a black hole would not be able to occupy space or affect light. We simply do not have the ability currently to understand what that is.
By definition, that is not nothing. It is a that we cannot know/understand it, at that moment. Notably, a lack of evidence is not evidence of nothing.
Not the event horizon of a black hole, but the singularity at the center. The event horizon is only a singularity in certain coordinate systems, but you can select coordinates that are smooth there. The black hole singularity is more comparable to big bang, in the sense that it is an indication of missing physics.
He means the matter we know as galaxies today.
Our current theory implies that our space we know and love (bound by our time, spacetime) expanded at that moment. We know we shouldn't be seeing older galaxies that look younger than others we know to be young. That's what's implied by these findings at least - they could still be explained by other things we have yet to discover, because we haven't finished processing this data.
The title is just for the clicks.