I like that you add a little portrait of individual authors on the papers that you show. I know its not a big thing necessarily, but putting a face to the name kinda grounds it in my mind. I know these are real people, but seeing a face makes it feel more real... if that makes any sense. Also I imagine the authors like it as well. Adding a bit of humanity to the cold science.
Considering the race to throw together AI compiled fluff in articles now it's more important than ever to appreciate the creative contributions of real people.
@@HermanVonPetriYou really had to shoehorn in a point about AI, huh. I'm so sick of seeing arguments over AI in completely unrelated threads. We get it, you hate/love AI, your opinion is heard. 🙄
What is amazing about living in this time compared to Hubble's discoveries in the 1920s-1930s is that we have science communicators like you who can and do reach others who would otherwise be unable to access/understand the new knowledge. Thank you for being generous just for the sake of letting us understand.
@@richardevans560There was no easy to access mass media. In the 1920s it was mainly Printed paper, radio, going in person to talks and meetings(which required finding out through printed paper or word of mouth. There was also educational film. But non of those were as easy to access as the internet and RUclips since we carry those in our pockets 24/7
A great post that exemplifies the value of skepticism and accounting for uncertainty. The best part is how JWST stimulates thought. Dr. Becky has cemented her role as my goto inspiration for astrophysical reasoning.
I appreciate people exploring all our options, if nothing else. I think these types of papers are extremely useful, so really glad they are getting made, whether right or not.
Even more so when it is a controversial topic many will oppose because it challenges a fairly common view. People forget that dark mater and all that only was invented to make all the models work somehow. So we likely just don't know it any better for now.
The great thing about research like this is that in attempting to refute it, someone could potentially be inspired to come up with a solution to one of those problems, or even a better model than lambda CDM. And thats really exciting!
Unfortunately, the most probable response is that the mass of those galaxies were overstimated. The bigger a star is, the bigger the ratio between its luminosity (observed) and mass (deduced) is also, and the consensus is that early stars were huge, but it’s still fuzzy on how much.
@@franck3279 That's easy to say and harder to prove. And thats my point. If someone wants to refute this paper they will need to look into those assumptions and attempt to actually disprove them. Which may turn out to be a heck of alot more interesting than this paper.
@@patreekotime4578 I agree with you too. Sadly it is possible that the "right" answer, whatever that may be and amongst the sea of wrong answers, may disagree with current thinking and be automatically treated with the usual skepticism while dubious results and variations that "agree" will continue to be lauded with very little refutement.
@@gonegahgah I dont think thats sad. It would be untenable if the entire scientific community jumped to accept every new theory before it is rigorously proven. The stauchness of conservative thinking within science just means that when new theories ARE eventually accepted, then we the general public can be assured that they have undergone the necessary scrutiny to be considered fact.
@@patreekotime4578 There not considered fact. Until all facets are "proven" they remain that way. They become the prevailing theory. Otherwise they would be called laws rather than theories. Extension of another theory is not proof. Like the ridiculous Hawking Radiation. Further, a lot of our theories do not explain the underpinnings and until they do they lack foundation. It's almost as if they are giving up trying to fathom that relegating it as unimportant. I certainly don't think they should accept every new theory. However they have to not shut themselves off from being wrong and that there may be a more accurate approach to finding the underpinnings. Unfortunately we a exceedingly locked more into group think rather than pre-bias free critical thinking. You can hear it in the language of these scientists, including our Dr Becky. Any data that contradicts is immediately spoken of as suspect with strong belief that it will disappear. Anything that agrees with current thinking is immediately embraced without any scepticism what-so-ever. Just take LIGO for example. They haven't released their data despite promising that they would. But still there are only a very few who question them.
Love that I can come here for actual science and data instead of sensationalized pop-sci garbage. Even PBS Spacetime is giving you shout outs! Never change Dr Becky!
Great analysis, thanks! Like you said, this is such a cool time to be watching these discoveries - there are so many ideas to explore. I love your balance of healthy skepticism and openness to new possibilities. This one does seem like a long shot, but an interesting way to at least try to explain the discrepancies.
The great thing about science is that even a paper that's considered incorrect after more work on the subject is still valuable because it's encoraged other work that may show other results or even spawned new lines of research that advance understanding . There's also a part of me that thinks it's funny that everyone was saying how JWST would change the way we think about the universe and when it does that a bunch of scientists go " erm ............ Naa " lol
How do people not question dark matter, whose only evidence is that our calculations for gravity/mass keep turning out to be wrong, but you do question a model that actually works and has evidence from JWST that it could be right? If this model fit with the current paradigm then this doubt would not be present and people would have accepted it without question. This is the problem with science in the modern era. It's all about furthering the current paradigm and not true discovery, if that discovery doesn't fit with how modern science believes it to be. The egos and the aggrandization of knowledge of the current paradigm is turning science into the catholic church of old
@@la7era1u54 People do question dark matter. That's the whole thing with science , everything is questioned . The older universe theory was born from questioning the standard view and that theory is being questioned in turn. In the words of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century , " That's all science is , it's best guess "
@@la7era1u54why do you think people don't question dark matter? There is a video about the doubts it raises on this channel itself. It's probably the topic that incites the most scepticism.
So happy for you that you get to participate in the JWST era, and so thankful you take the time to bring us along for the ride. This was a great episode.
I'm using this amazing comment: Each new telescope will double the "age" of Universe. No beginning, no end! Only more money for scientists(space watchers & content creators) to keep us entertained.
It is absolutely insane to me that the idea that redshift could be due to both expansion of the universe AND tired light wasn't seriously considered before now. That's hardly a wildly outside-the-box idea. There has to be more to it than this.
Scince about 1982 I have always thought the universe was about twice as old as we think it is...but not because of "tired light"....because people tend to just take measurements and wind the clock backwards to the moment of the big bang. One dimension to 4 dimensions of spacetime are assumed to "pop" into existance at the moment of the big bang. That seemed wrong. The dimension of time unfolded and continues to unfold. It was never a linear progression. Why does everyone assume that time was passing at the same rate at the beginning of the universe as it does now? We talk so easily about what happened fractions of a second after the big bang but we don't even attempt to conceptualize how time would be passing within that universe relative to being outside the universe. And what boggles my mind is the same people who would say that rate of time passing, in the early universe relative to now, is trivial, are the same people who say time can slow down near black holes and that time difference is not trivial. Black holes are a simple concept and yet the universe is unfathomable?
Well like she said, there is not a single star out there that is older than the current estimates. So this doesn't give you much incentive to look in this direction, unless you can prove that there are older stars out there, or the measurement was not correct.
@@3komma141592653 Wow how do u know how old the stars is ? Have you been there and see when a star was born ? Any records ? Any evidences ? Did someone get a sample from a star to estimate how old the star is ? No ! After many years when Ai became more and more advanced and mistery are solved, i will came back here, and laught at your "scientiest" faces. With big joy i may add. I will be very happy to laught at your faces about how WRONG you been.
I’ve believed the universe to be 13.8 billion years old all my life. I’m now 64, and this really blows my mind and I’m not sure I can cope. I also really miss Pluto as a planet. Shakes me to the core.
Pluto is a planet if you want it to be. It is a definitions game. The new definition doesn't invalidate the old one and you simply choose to follow that or another.
I'm now 66 and have always believed that our current models of space always tend to be over turned when we build telescopes more powerful then the previous one.
I don't think the universe cares too much as to whether or not we can comprehend the fact of how time doesn't have a beginning or an end or the scope of infinity.
The subject paper does not claim to be "the answer", but rather it is an interesting and useful "what if we try this, and this, and this" exercise. Science and scientists often become too confident in what they think they know. It's good when new data throws us a curve ball and causes us to question the unquestionable. Critical thinking and analyzing the effects of different "what if" theories is useful and should always be encouraged.
I agree. These days there is an assumption that just because it has been peer reviewed and published, then it must be correct and unassailable. Now, to get peer reviewed and published, one must not be too controversial either. This is not how science should work. Only by freely sharing (and being able to freely challenge) research and ideas, can the valid be sorted from the invalid and downright crazy. Maybe the universe is double the current theorised age, maybe it isn't... but it's worthy of discussion either way, not instant dismissal. For the most part, modern science is driven by quotas on publications, and by staying well inside the box, it's not how humans progressed in the past.
It staggers me to think that there may be beings in these galaxies billions of light years away, at this moment, looking at our Milky Way and saying it is 28 billion or 13.8 billion years old....but has "too many stars"....and debating how "young" galaxies like ours must be near the beginning of the universe!
This channel and Anton Petrov both put out videos with extremely interesting but also very suspect findings in the last few hours. Both make great content.
I agree about Becky and Petrov, being skeptical or suspecting is a healthy habit. Furthermore, it's a scientist duty. We had horrible experiences in the last few years for not doubting about the propaganda pushed to us in the name of science. The best example is what big pharma sold us as "vaccines" two years ago. Now they are trying to use the same schemes with climate change no less
They both do a great job and repeatedly point out how speculative some of the concepts they explore are. I check for new content on both channels every few days. We are quite fortunate to have such enthusiastic young people to share this fascinating and rapidly evolving subject.
It's great isn't it! We are all slaves who will starve to death unless you slave away everyday, we havea new piece of propaganda to dribble over though, life is fantastic! 😂
I have no doubt in my mind that our "best fit" models for the beginnings of the universe are probably wrong. I love that we live in an age where every new discovery and study pushes us to question everything that we know about the Universe we live in.
The whole idea of science is to determine what we think is real/true until we discover new information. This is the true meaning of a 'theory'. It's also a policy which all good manager's adopt.
Only 100 years ago we were still arguing about whether there was more than one galaxy. I think we've been too presumptious in thinking we have everything figured out bar the minor details for some time now.
@@dayceem who told you how do you know? Did you read the CIA document stating that humans are nothing but energy gods, but I know that’s where you got it from.
Well whats fun about space is that we can never know if we are right at all only for basic stuff, i mean this is what we can see so far using the most advanced telescope built(jwst) we dont even know how big space is
My teacher back in the 90s also told us that the age of the universe was first said to be around 24 billion, then down to 20, at some point to 18, then 16, then 14. He said "at some point, they'll end up near that estimate of that guy who added the dates of the bible and ended at somewhere near 6000 years."
Kind of like walking out into a field and seeing as far as you can. Then , walk to the furthest thing you see, then another picture with things in the next visual distance. Whom will ever know how large our universe is? Or, how long it's been a universe. Just mind blowing.
I predict the JWST will be replaced by larger, stronger telescopes in the future that will look farther back in time and discover fully formed galaxies many times the size of our own. In short, we’ve got no idea of the size of the universe
Amazing as usual! I love the depth of the explanations and how you go through so many of the concepts to shed light on the information. Many articles I partially read in the past gave a dim idea of what's happening in the field and I now feel like I can get a much better idea how influential an article or paper is on the whole of astrophysics and cosmology.
Do you like math numbers (not letters)? I enjoy this channel because of her down to Earth way of explaining everything to us. Keep trying and keep watching.
Respectfully, and in my humble opinion as a scientist, it is a very brave scientist who places more weight (reliability) that the difference in the 'traditional age' vs the 'new suggested age' could possibly be explained by error in Gupta et al's calculating the Red Shift, given we know essentially NOTHING about what makes up 95% of the composition of our Universe! In my opinion Gupta et al's paper is much closer to the "observable thruth" which also dispels the "notion for the Big Band" circa 13.8 billion years ago! [In my 50+ years studying applied chemistry, geology, celestial mechanics, I have always believed "the big bang" was ficticious due simply to the fact of not knowing what 95% of the universe constitutes]. A very good video, nevertheless. Cheers from Down Under
I love these videos! Very captivating science topics, and of course the bloopers are the best! Adding some blooper humor to all this serious science stuff definitely helps to close each video on a light note. Thank you Dr. Becky for bringing us worthwhile science content in an easy to understand format!
Thanks a bunch for all the explanations, dr. Becky! 😊 What I most liked about this study is the free thinking of the author. He's probably wrong, but we need to do it more! Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
I really enjoy your explanations and comparisons involving cosmological hypotheses. I took two years of physics in college, and have done reading in astronomy, etc. ever since. My math stopped at analytic geometry, but I still appreciate your discussions. Keep educating us!!!
Thank you for making this video. Ever since this news came out I've been trying to wrap my head around it. You provided info in a way that's digestible to us mere mortals. Side note: I love your nail colour in this video.
Two questions that my grandkids came up with after watching your video from a while ago and I simply was stumped. 1) If there is another Univers out there, could we collide some day? 2) If the big happened once, could it happen again now? Would that destroy this universe and make a new one? If someone could give me an answer that I can make sense of to them that would be great.
I really enjoy your videos and the way you explain complex subjects. You have also really inspired my son who couldn’t get qualified answers to his astronomy questions from his teachers at school. We both appreciate your channel and thank you for the time and effort you put into these videos along with making them entertaining. Keep them coming!
Thanks for breaking down Gupta paper for me! I’m surprised that you say that “tired light” is a scattering phenomenon. If that occurred even in the voids (not just in the region close to the source) then space would look foggy - distant sources would become indistinct while the cosmic background would go way up. Scattering causes reddening by deflecting blue photons more than red. Surely Zwicky had something else in mind, like the Sachs-Wolfe effect of photons traveling through deepening potentials.
Tired light could be caused by the estimated 1 trillion white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole binaries that all produce very tiny gravitational waves. Remember that every star that collapsed into a denser object is still out there somewhere and if it's a binary it's been producing gravitational waves since the beginning of time. The waves might be less than the height of a proton but when you add a trillion of them together and every particle of light has to plow through that soup of miniature gravitational waves then it could possibly affect perceived red shift in ways that people are not calculating for. My understanding is astrophysicists simply discount gravitational waves as being insignificant. That belief may come back to bite them one day
Epochs of science and understanding are amazing. I was an astrophysics major (amongst many others in my 18 years at university) before becoming a geography major, a science I refer to affectionately as "the science of how man relates to the universe." This is the sort of stuff that gets me really quivering; the epochs of our understanding. I read this research before you made your first video regarding it and felt the same as you: Skeptical. But that's just good science. I still don't buy it as fact, but it could open a door to us realizing that the universe is actually 18 billion years old. Let's see where the research takes us. 🍻 Cheers, Dr. Smethurst.
Would have loved to have had a science teacher like you when I was in school, I would have probably paid more attention in class as you bring such energy and enthusiasm to your videos.... Thank you
Be an adult, take ownership of your past mistakes, and move on. I was a bad student too. Everyone here viewing this video is a willing participant. Teachers don't get to choose their students.
Data from JWST has been such a massive leap in our understanding of the cosmos, and we've barely scratched the surface. What a time to be alive. The absolutely gorgeous pictures are a very nice bonus. I've been very worried for many years about humanity's waning interest in space exploration, space agencies losing funding, and more "local" issues drawing attention away. I hope that JWST and the upcoming Carl Sagan Observatory continue to get more people looking up.
Astronomy has always been more a luxury item than an essential one, at least when it comes to the distant universe. I still believe it should be well funded, for several reasons but we do have more pressing issues to deal with than understanding the age of the universe, so if money is tight...
@@EnglishMikeAstronomy is most definitely not a luxury. Many scientific discoveries were made thanks to space exploration that have transformed our day to day lives. Without astronomy, there is no space exploration. And space exploration gave us important technologies 😊
@@Power_to_the_people567 Space exploration and astronomy are two different things. I certainly agree that much that we have learned through building telescopes and launching them into space, as well as designs of other spacecraft has been beneficial in other walks of life, but as of right now, if -- say -- we had to sacrifice 90% of the world astronomy budget in order to halt or even reverse climate change, then everyone (except those whose livelihoods would be sacrificed) would agree it was worth doing. JWST is a phenomenon, and I'm very happy it's up there doing great work, but other than satisfying our curiosity, there's not a lot of practical use for it when it comes to improving life here on Earth. It's a luxury because we have the time and money to spare to do these things. It hasn't always been the case.
Loved this video! Was waiting for it ever since I heard about the paper. Dr.Becky just does an excellent job at explaining the nuances what a dope space channel!
@@robertmartin7202yeah. She rules. Synonymous with awesome, she rocks! She’s the greatest! Amazing! Let me know if you need any help breaking down simple phrases.
This really touches on a subject I'm really interested in--our ideas of the differences between stellar evolution in population II and population III stars (and their varying metalicity) and how this affects star formation and creation rates. I'm thinking if we had more data on this, our model for the spread of types of stars we assume in these most distant, older galaxies would change. I need to read this paper for sure.
_"I need to read this paper for sure."_ Don't bother. It is nonsense. And the most distant galaxies we see re low mass and low metallicity. As expected.
I think what we're learning is that our physics is based on too many assumptions and some of them are probably wrong. What we have works only slightly better than guessing after a certain point.
Considering that time is the most accurately measured physical parameter in physics, I think we have a very good understanding of how it works in our universe.
@@stargazer7644Our measurement of time is a construct relative to our own solar system. People calling things like our understanding of timespace a "very good" understanding of things is why this very video has been made. It's foolish to believe we have even a slight clue of such phenomenon in the vastness of the universe.
@@johnnymo4000Your measurement of time is only relative to YOU. Time for me flows at a different rate than time does for you. It has nothing to do with where the solar system is.
Thanks for the great explanation of the paper and its weaknesses and of the JWST data it was based on. Your chanell is so much better than others, your way of explanation is so great that you make it understandable without oversimplyfying. It seams natural, but I think there is a lot of hard work behind it. I really apperciate that you explain not only the conclusions but also tha data the conclusions are made of, you show us the graphs and other data visualizations and that you also shares the doubts scientists have about the data and the conclusions. Than enables me to understand the work of astronomers better and astronomy has become a vivid and dynamic science for me.
So we're now moving the goal post? What about the fact that the universe was in major chaos during the rapid expansion of the big bang? Time dilation based on the chaotic conditions would make it virtually impossible to properly determine the time, not to mention the cosmic time clock vs the clock of the rapidly moving galaxies. I'm not convinced we know all the complex factors that should be mathematically factored into time dilation.
I am always skeptical when I hear claims of "oldest star found" or "oldest cluster found" because they omit "yet" or "so far." There's also the question of, "What would a star or cluster look like if it was even older?" Might it be that after a star or cluster reaches a certain age that it becomes undetectable (with current technology) from Earth? In other words, does our technology make it IMPOSSIBLE to find anything older?
There is a critical mass of hydrogen, that has to be reached, before the core pressure and energy builds up, to cause the hydrogen to release photons is reached. Hence the period of around 11 million years before any observation of the beginning of stars can be observed. If they don't meet any other matter, they will turn into black dwarf stars. They will emit some light for billions of years before they become a cold black mass. So they can't be observed unless they pass in front of another light source. I would imagine there are millions spread around the inner circle of the Universe. And yeah, if they can't be seen, how could you date them? But having said that, there are the other stars that have been created since, which does give something to measure. So it's probable there is only a few billion years between them and the millions of cold black masses we can't observe. So the 'oldest' star is a lump of carbon drifting in space. But i'm a couch potato and not an astrophysicist. So a pinch of salt is all my thoughts are worth.
A while ago I read a book by an astronomer who went to Australia to search for old stars, by which she meant stars whose spectra show a large proportion of helium relative to hydrogen, that being a stand-in metric for age. That's likely the best metric available today.
@@laurendoe168 Great question. My understanding is that the glowing surface of sun-like stars emits light with spectrum mostly from hydrogen and helium while iron would usually be found deep in the core.
@@timothyallen6411 Yes, but wouldn't older stars "leak" some of the light caused by iron? Sure, light created by a star takes millions of years to reach the surface, but it eventually does.
I suppose the next step for Gupta et al and anyone else that wants to explore it is to find some evidence that the new parameters work as expected, yeah?
(where the age of the observable universe was calculated from a constant expansion rate the observable universe acclerates - the age is probably much older than we think )
I like the idea of light experiencing 'friction' as it travels through space. We often say that space is a vacuum but it's clearly not entirely, it's just that the big bits outshine the little bits. I can totally understand the idea that there's an effect on light as it travels for billions of years.
Tired light has a scary implication: There may be a distance far enough away that all photons lose their energy entirely before reaching us, meaning there might be a hard limit on how large our observable universe is, no matter how powerful our optics tech gets.
@@WorldbuildyMcNPCfaceThat's exactly the implication of accelerated expansion. Either scenario ends with the limits of the universe being redshifted into absolute darkness.
I suspect tired light theory and the expansion of the universe weren't mutually exclusive of one another in the first place. This seems to happen quite often in physics; you get several competing models framed in the popular press as 'competing' with one another when they either complement one another, or otherwise don't mutually exclude. It makes perfect sense that, for objects moving away from us, their light becomes progressively more likely to interact with dust and other material in the intervening space. In the same way that you get a Doppler shift with sound waves travelling through a progressively larger number of air molecules (as in a train moving away from an observer), the light would be likely to lose energy with an increase in distance.
Way back in the late 90's I was getting my degree in physic and the whole acceleration of the expanding universe was crushing the theoretical guys. I was a engineering physics major so never really got deep into the cosmology, but I recall one of the proposed "fringe" theories was that the speed of light was slowing down proportional to the inverse of time cubed. (basically the idea was that the universe wasn't accelerating but the meter stick we measured it with was getting shorter) I don't recall the exact equation at the time, however, I seem to recall that it matched the supernova data and would explain the young hot sun and lunar regression mismatch (sedimentary data vs laser measurement). I took my degree and left physics to become a normal engineer and lost touch with all of the in's and outs of this sort of thing. Obviously that never took off of one reason or another. Anyway any thoughts if one of these older ideas that got thrown to the sideline in favor of dark energy might have a better solution.
Or the expansion might be caused by infinite space filled with matter we can't see because it's too far away but an infinity of time has allowed the gravity of that infinite matter to act on our local collection of galaxies. The other option is to believe that space has an edge that our future "starships" will bump into. Yes, silly, but so was sailing off the edge of a flat earth.
Credit to you for engaging an audience of 600k views with such a sprawling subject. I very much enjoyed it, too, as an amateur (and academically challenged) Astro physics enthusiast!
That’s exactly what the scientific community is saying. Only they go further and try to find out the answer sometimes by hypothesizing like in this example science is all about hypothesizing and then testing. That’s how we find out what we do know.
@@kaerbearno science is about coming to probable conclusions based on documenting repeatable outcomes to questions/experiments. Guessing blindly is not science .. hypothesising is theorising without evidence or patterning. Again… not science.
If the science community aren’t sure, where do they get their “.8s” and “.7s” from? If they’re saying they might be out by as much 13 billion years, then the “.8s”/“.7s” are laughably irrelevant. I’ve never heard of “tired light.” I’ve been led to believe that Light is the only “constant” in the Universe.🤔
Thanks Dr Becky. Throwing in a wild idea here: is it possible that the mass of the universe itself comes into play at those distances (z=11 or greater) and that causes the horizon of the universe to 'sag' a little bit and that distorts our view of how old the universe is? It's like collective mass of the universe itself curves spacetime ever so slightly away from any observer.
I wondered if the mass-density of the universe would be a factor. The universe is smaller, the mass is more compacted, gravity is locally more influential, more stuff just comes together faster?
*I always had thoughts of it being larger than we was able to see!* Without knowledge of the actual size and shape our eyes may only see where it curves other than the beginning.
Didn't someone else already make the case that the early universe stars were simply larger and brighter (one of your videos on how we make an assumption regarding brightness/size of galaxies by comparing them to the size/brightness of our own), and that was the reasoning as to why the galaxies JWST observed appeared so "large" when its more likely smaller galaxies with just really large/bright stars?
Yeah, I thought it was way out there as well. Thanks for confirming Dr. Becky!! ❤ P.S. nothing wrong with having a cushion whenever you're sitting on the floor. Regardless of age! 🙂
It's not entirely true that Edwin Hubble first calculated H0. George Lemaître independently calculated it two years prior, but it was published in a lower impact French language journal.
Another factor that I have been thinking of is gravitational density impact since it's known that we have gravitational lensing and the notion that gravity slows down time. The early universe had a higher mass density since it was smaller, so could that impact the perceived age and actual age of the universe?
This video is kinda great but it has some flaws. 1) claimed tired light were refuted and considered fringe because it failed the tolman and angular distance test, then proceeds a few minutes later to shows a paper were tired light (even without ccc) match the state of the art data while LCDM largely fails those cosmological tests... It is true a few papers with very low quality data claimed refutation of TL in the 90s but since 2005 TL has passed and LCDM failed every modern tolman/angular tests (including via Galex, spitzer, hubble and jwst light curves) It only really shows that cosmology before being a functional science, is an orthodoxy that marginalize competition independently of their empirical validation. 2) Becky links a paper showing the oldest globular clusters are much more recent than Gupta datation, however there were no explanation made as to how the linked paper estimation of the age of those clusters is independent of a model dependent interpretation of redshift, meaning those age estimates are very likely made assuming LCDM and hence are non applicable (circular reasoning). Even if it were possible to date those clusters in a model independent way (which I doubt), purelly via eddington accretion time, there have been clusters that have been found to be older than the universe, more accuratelly, 26 years old, consistent with Gupta. This is made possible by studying blue stragglers, which are a special kind of stars that are considerably slower to form arxiv.org/abs/2401.11549 (worth mentioning it in a video btw) 3) It's a good point that photometric redshifts can be wrong and maybe it was not known 9 months ago (no idea) but we have sinces many too high redshifts confirmed via JWST spectroscopy. arxiv.org/abs/2405.12665 4) As for reproducing the CMB, the CMB is a belief, it can be perfectly reproduced by cosmic dust rethermalization iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/2197/1/012026/meta
Dr Becky is the first astrophysicist? I've seen on RUclips that I totally wish was living in my state working as a physics professor so I would not have any excuse to not go back to college. At the same time I appreciate every video as they are all well presented and brilliant. The knowledge level and clear love of your field makes all your videos enthralling. I wish everyone transferred information at such an interesting level. First time I have heard of the tired light theory in a long time (I think I read in Kip S Thornes, "Black holes and Time Warps" or a Brian Greene books) Two other incredible educators and physicists. Either way keep sciencing the crap out of everything. Totally rocks!
Ok here is a hypothesis. Assume the universe is 50 billion years old, however, the distance for light to travel is also larger. Now assume a galaxy is 51 billion lightyears away, that means the light wont get to us for another billion years. we would be incapable of detecting anything from it. So it is possible that the universe is much much bigger, and what we are seeing is galaxies etc coming in to sight as the first light transmitted from them is only just starting to be received by us.
If the Universe would indeed turn out to be a lot older than we thought, then wouldn't that put quite a twist on Fermi's Paradox? After all, Aliens would then have had twice a serious amount of the time to reach us one way or the other. Well, time will tell.
If they had a life span 26 billion years long a space ship that could last 26 billion years (Entropy) a law of physics. That would be based on if they left from the most distant part of the supposed universe. Or how about only one light year away. They better not run out of Dilithium crystals it would really put Scotty in a bind.
@@stephenfrench3888 exactly it asks a question that has an insanely simple answer. why haven't we found aliens yet? because the universe is unknowablely vast and we haven't been looking very long. now if after a few thousand years we go without any evidence of aliens then maybe we take a look at this so called paradox but until then we just need to be patient and enjoy the ride
What if,,,,, other civilizations have been visiting earth all along,,,,,however they found us to be too primitive and war like to be trusted,, so we are now under quarantine .
Right 13b always seemed an overly conservative estimate to me. But I’m no physicist so no place to argue it. But I’m not buying this 27b either. I’ll just assume we have no idea and will never know
Agreed. It is like the universe is brand new. Other thing that is odd is the down right slow moving speed of light. Why so slow? Yes. I'm serious. Then there is dark matter and dark energy, not to mention non-sensical quantum mechanics. Sometimes, I think we must have very flawed theories on the nature of reality. A big thing we assume is correct that is flat wrong.
Measured against the infinite or say the projected lifetimes of red dwarfs in the trillions of years even if the universe was 50 billion years old it would still seem incredibly young! If the current estimates of the very last star winking out in about 100 trillion years 20 billion years is only about 0.002% or in human term about 2.5 months out of 100 years.
One of my instructors- an associate professor of physics was an astrophysicist. He admitted that if cosmologists were within two orders of magnitude they called that a good day. 😎 How many ‘impossible objects’ must we find before scientists will admit they are wrong?
The Universe is trillions of years old. I remember as a kid in the 70s, all the Astroscientist knew compared to now, it's just a drop in the Giant Multiverse we live in. We haven't even taken into account the effect dark matter/ gravitational space distortions that effect even the red spectrum. I love watching your show and how passionate you are. Keep those crazy JWST discoveries coming! We have many more years of mind-boggling discoveries to come. So excited!!
I find it refreshing that astrophysics still allows scepticism and recognises the dangers of observational and conformational bias, while other parts of science have become secular religions, where the mere act of questioning is treated as heresy.
14:35 - thankyou so much for emphasising that just because you think the paper is incorrect, doesn't mean it's a bad paper! It gets tiring having people always picking "sides" - we don't have to! You can have multiple contradictory ideas floating around! It's OK! That's just how science works.
LOL silly scientists Any "evidence" the universe appears older than 5000 years is just proof of what a great job our creator, The FSM, did at making it appear that way! Five Thousand Years Ago: The Beginning THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER created the universe and a bunch of planets, including Earth. No one except Himself was around to see it, but we suspect it was rather dull. The initial creation, obviously, must have been spectacular, but He then spent the next ten to one hundred years painstakingly preparing the universe to appear older than it actually is. Photons were placed individually, en route to earth, ostensibly emitted millions of years ago from stars across the galaxy. In reality, we know that each photon was divinely placed and red-shifted appropriately to make the universe appear to be billions of years old. We are still finding His camouflage methods at work today; each time scientists discover apparent evidence of a billions-of-years-old universe, we can be assured that this is just more elaborate preparation He put in place.
@6:13 - love your videos, very thought provoking. A bit of a way to sound more educated though, don't say 'less' of something that is incremental in description... Say 'fewer' waves of light - not 'less' of them. If it can be counted - 'fewer', if it is decanted or non-integer in nature - 'less' is okay. "fewer gallons", "less water", etc.
Can't wait until we finally discover that the Universe is infinitely old, infinitely large, infinitely spreading out and then regrouping, and located inside a snow-globe on a shelf somewhere in Derbyshire.
If it's a snow globe situation (if the universe isn't flat), then it wouldn't be infinite. In fact, if the universe is a snow globe (a 4d snow globe) it would mean if you travelld at super warp speed a straight line, you'd eventually end up where you started. The universe would have a finite "circumference" but in 4D. If the universe is infinite, then it has to be flat or one of a few other weird shapes (not a snow globe, snow globes are finite). The universe appears to be flat (infinite), but perhaps that's because we're only seeing a tiny piece of a finite, but really big universe. Kinda like how most of us personally experience the earth as "flat" due to our limited perspective here on the surface. But if you traveled in a straight line in a fast jet, you'd eventually find yourself weirdly back where you started.
As a self educated person (after getting EE degree and attending 5 yrs of Math , physics studies) : I NEVER accepted the Big Bang theory; the models of the universe; or the idea that all life on earth started by chance. Today the Big BAng theory is DISCREDITED as a theory , the Universe has "black holes" , and there are even theories that some living creatures arrive via a meteor collisions.
Way back in recent history, the only media outlet for astronomy was, as he was then, Mr Patrick Moore's The Sky at Night; on one episode, he introduced the idea of HALTON ARP's about quasars, red shift and other controversys. I bought the book from America, somewhat of a feat back then. He had some theory that reminded me of your current post. Lol Pete on the IOW
When I heard that galaxies aren't uniform but have a structure, analogous to being on the connections between soap bubbles, it made me wonder if the expansion of the universe occurs at different rates within the bubbles compared to along the lines?
I love and live on this stuff. The only way we learn is by challenging what we think we know. Like how we still think that everything we have observed is all that there is. Sometimes its not about proving there is more, but simply just not assuming that there isn't, just because we haven't seen it. I think if we are seeing things at greater distances that appear to be older than they should be, then perhaps we need to start thinking about "our" big bang as perhaps being 1, in a sequence of many. The last in a line of a few. It would only make the space that the content is expanding into much older, but It would also explain why we are encountering things, with signs of being older than this current expansion of content. This may also be why there might be things beyond the threshold of our local expansion, that are only just creeping into our view because of JWST? The simplest version of what i'm thinking would be that is the fabric of space we are expanding into if infinite, may house other big bang clusters of content. Our "universe" is local to us, @ 13.9bn years old, but there might be other big bang clusters spread through this fabric in the same way we obvserve galaxies. In reality It's just another layer, but it seems to fit the pattern of stars solar systems galaxies clusters, super clusters, big bang clusters? Just my thoughts. sorry.
I am in agreement with the thinking of Sir Roger Pennrose in that since energy can neither be crated nor destroyed only altered or transmitted then the same principle must apply to existence itself which is also composed of energy. The Higgs field must be an energy field of some description yet unknown. Eternity can do nothing else than exist forever, with no beginning and no end. I think we are only just beginning to discover infinity and the eternal one. Thank you for this illuminating video Dr. Becky.
Maybe, it just feels twice as old. I can relate to that.
Relatable.
I'm 23.8±10 years old. I'll tell you more, once more evidence comes in.
Brilliant.... 😅😅😅
@@roberthoey2121 0
Your comment and the subsequent thread of replies have made my day, I too can relate lol
I like that you add a little portrait of individual authors on the papers that you show. I know its not a big thing necessarily, but putting a face to the name kinda grounds it in my mind. I know these are real people, but seeing a face makes it feel more real... if that makes any sense. Also I imagine the authors like it as well. Adding a bit of humanity to the cold science.
Considering the race to throw together AI compiled fluff in articles now it's more important than ever to appreciate the creative contributions of real people.
Yes, Ive seen a few science-related channels doing this lately and I really think its a great idea.
@@HermanVonPetriYou really had to shoehorn in a point about AI, huh. I'm so sick of seeing arguments over AI in completely unrelated threads. We get it, you hate/love AI, your opinion is heard. 🙄
Yeah, facial recognition is one of our strongest visual capabilities. It really does help form memories, to see the name and face together.
agreed!!! I feel that too
I love the fact that JWST is challenging our understandings of the universe, it is exactly what any great experiment is supposed to achieve.
actually it only challenges false belief. the universe is electric.
@@thephuntastics2920 In science there is no false belief, there is theory and failed theory. Science should not be a belief system.
@@rrmackay Currently a failed theory is what everybody mindless believe.
@@mahead that still isn't science, it just means public misconception.
@@corrinflakes9659 since that misconception is endorsed by academia, it makes science an ambiguous term
What is amazing about living in this time compared to Hubble's discoveries in the 1920s-1930s is that we have science communicators like you who can and do reach others who would otherwise be unable to access/understand the new knowledge. Thank you for being generous just for the sake of letting us understand.
@@old_sentinelthey meant the person, not the telescope
How exactly would they have communicated it to you in the 1920s?
@@richardevans560 newspapers, books and soon radio
@@richardevans560There was no easy to access mass media.
In the 1920s it was mainly Printed paper, radio, going in person to talks and meetings(which required finding out through printed paper or word of mouth. There was also educational film.
But non of those were as easy to access as the internet and RUclips since we carry those in our pockets 24/7
@@richardevans560 By scientific papers I guess.
A great post that exemplifies the value of skepticism and accounting for uncertainty. The best part is how JWST stimulates thought. Dr. Becky has cemented her role as my goto inspiration for astrophysical reasoning.
I appreciate people exploring all our options, if nothing else. I think these types of papers are extremely useful, so really glad they are getting made, whether right or not.
Even more so when it is a controversial topic many will oppose because it challenges a fairly common view. People forget that dark mater and all that only was invented to make all the models work somehow. So we likely just don't know it any better for now.
@@3komma141592653 specifically, dark matter is the difference between observed gravitational forces vs expected from relativity
The great thing about research like this is that in attempting to refute it, someone could potentially be inspired to come up with a solution to one of those problems, or even a better model than lambda CDM. And thats really exciting!
Unfortunately, the most probable response is that the mass of those galaxies were overstimated. The bigger a star is, the bigger the ratio between its luminosity (observed) and mass (deduced) is also, and the consensus is that early stars were huge, but it’s still fuzzy on how much.
@@franck3279 That's easy to say and harder to prove. And thats my point. If someone wants to refute this paper they will need to look into those assumptions and attempt to actually disprove them. Which may turn out to be a heck of alot more interesting than this paper.
@@patreekotime4578 I agree with you too. Sadly it is possible that the "right" answer, whatever that may be and amongst the sea of wrong answers, may disagree with current thinking and be automatically treated with the usual skepticism while dubious results and variations that "agree" will continue to be lauded with very little refutement.
@@gonegahgah I dont think thats sad. It would be untenable if the entire scientific community jumped to accept every new theory before it is rigorously proven. The stauchness of conservative thinking within science just means that when new theories ARE eventually accepted, then we the general public can be assured that they have undergone the necessary scrutiny to be considered fact.
@@patreekotime4578 There not considered fact. Until all facets are "proven" they remain that way. They become the prevailing theory. Otherwise they would be called laws rather than theories. Extension of another theory is not proof. Like the ridiculous Hawking Radiation. Further, a lot of our theories do not explain the underpinnings and until they do they lack foundation. It's almost as if they are giving up trying to fathom that relegating it as unimportant. I certainly don't think they should accept every new theory. However they have to not shut themselves off from being wrong and that there may be a more accurate approach to finding the underpinnings. Unfortunately we a exceedingly locked more into group think rather than pre-bias free critical thinking. You can hear it in the language of these scientists, including our Dr Becky. Any data that contradicts is immediately spoken of as suspect with strong belief that it will disappear. Anything that agrees with current thinking is immediately embraced without any scepticism what-so-ever. Just take LIGO for example. They haven't released their data despite promising that they would. But still there are only a very few who question them.
Love that I can come here for actual science and data instead of sensationalized pop-sci garbage. Even PBS Spacetime is giving you shout outs! Never change Dr Becky!
Ironic that you brought up PBS cause they don't do what she does
@@drsatan7554 Is it actually even legal for PBS to do that? Isn't she considered a Crown servant for employment purposes?
@@erkinalp free use
@@drsatan7554 They dont, but they are still a great channel .
@@captainkirk4271
Great analysis, thanks! Like you said, this is such a cool time to be watching these discoveries - there are so many ideas to explore. I love your balance of healthy skepticism and openness to new possibilities. This one does seem like a long shot, but an interesting way to at least try to explain the discrepancies.
The great thing about science is that even a paper that's considered incorrect after more work on the subject is still valuable because it's encoraged other work that may show other results or even spawned new lines of research that advance understanding . There's also a part of me that thinks it's funny that everyone was saying how JWST would change the way we think about the universe and when it does that a bunch of scientists go " erm ............ Naa " lol
Or at least "erm... Need more data"
@@MrSJPowell You can never have enough data .
How do people not question dark matter, whose only evidence is that our calculations for gravity/mass keep turning out to be wrong, but you do question a model that actually works and has evidence from JWST that it could be right? If this model fit with the current paradigm then this doubt would not be present and people would have accepted it without question. This is the problem with science in the modern era. It's all about furthering the current paradigm and not true discovery, if that discovery doesn't fit with how modern science believes it to be. The egos and the aggrandization of knowledge of the current paradigm is turning science into the catholic church of old
@@la7era1u54 People do question dark matter. That's the whole thing with science , everything is questioned . The older universe theory was born from questioning the standard view and that theory is being questioned in turn. In the words of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century , " That's all science is , it's best guess "
@@la7era1u54why do you think people don't question dark matter? There is a video about the doubts it raises on this channel itself. It's probably the topic that incites the most scepticism.
So happy for you that you get to participate in the JWST era, and so thankful you take the time to bring us along for the ride. This was a great episode.
I'm using this amazing comment: Each new telescope will double the "age" of Universe. No beginning, no end! Only more money for scientists(space watchers & content creators) to keep us entertained.
All the more reasons for scientists to document and video their thoughts during this beginning of JWST.
It is absolutely insane to me that the idea that redshift could be due to both expansion of the universe AND tired light wasn't seriously considered before now. That's hardly a wildly outside-the-box idea. There has to be more to it than this.
Seriously! Too many physicist busy wasting their time with string theory I guess.
Scince about 1982 I have always thought the universe was about twice as old as we think it is...but not because of "tired light"....because people tend to just take measurements and wind the clock backwards to the moment of the big bang. One dimension to 4 dimensions of spacetime are assumed to "pop" into existance at the moment of the big bang. That seemed wrong. The dimension of time unfolded and continues to unfold. It was never a linear progression. Why does everyone assume that time was passing at the same rate at the beginning of the universe as it does now? We talk so easily about what happened fractions of a second after the big bang but we don't even attempt to conceptualize how time would be passing within that universe relative to being outside the universe.
And what boggles my mind is the same people who would say that rate of time passing, in the early universe relative to now, is trivial, are the same people who say time can slow down near black holes and that time difference is not trivial. Black holes are a simple concept and yet the universe is unfathomable?
Well like she said, there is not a single star out there that is older than the current estimates. So this doesn't give you much incentive to look in this direction, unless you can prove that there are older stars out there, or the measurement was not correct.
@@3komma141592653 Wow how do u know how old the stars is ? Have you been there and see when a star was born ? Any records ? Any evidences ?
Did someone get a sample from a star to estimate how old the star is ?
No ! After many years when Ai became more and more advanced and mistery are solved, i will came back here, and laught at your "scientiest" faces. With big joy i may add.
I will be very happy to laught at your faces about how WRONG you been.
It's Occam's razor again. Scientists tend to go for a single explanation if they can find one that appears to fit
Thank you! I've been waiting for someone to break this down and not just jump to the conclusion that every other headline does!
Spacetacular summary indeed
I’ve believed the universe to be 13.8 billion years old all my life. I’m now 64, and this really blows my mind and I’m not sure I can cope. I also really miss Pluto as a planet. Shakes me to the core.
Pluto is a planet if you want it to be. It is a definitions game. The new definition doesn't invalidate the old one and you simply choose to follow that or another.
I'm now 66 and have always believed that our current models of space always tend to be over turned when we build telescopes more powerful then the previous one.
@@barongerhardt Thinking pluto is a "planet" is as idiotic at thinking a whale is a fish. Get over it already.
It's so rude when scientists refer to Neptune as the last planet in our solar system. Pluto is a dwarf planet, and deserves respect!
@@KuK137well it fits 2/3 of the planet requirements, it just fails to have its moon in an orbit, instead they orbit one another. So...
I don't think the universe cares too much as to whether or not we can comprehend the fact of how time doesn't have a beginning or an end or the scope of infinity.
Exactly.
The subject paper does not claim to be "the answer", but rather it is an interesting and useful "what if we try this, and this, and this" exercise. Science and scientists often become too confident in what they think they know. It's good when new data throws us a curve ball and causes us to question the unquestionable. Critical thinking and analyzing the effects of different "what if" theories is useful and should always be encouraged.
I agree. These days there is an assumption that just because it has been peer reviewed and published, then it must be correct and unassailable. Now, to get peer reviewed and published, one must not be too controversial either.
This is not how science should work.
Only by freely sharing (and being able to freely challenge) research and ideas, can the valid be sorted from the invalid and downright crazy.
Maybe the universe is double the current theorised age, maybe it isn't... but it's worthy of discussion either way, not instant dismissal.
For the most part, modern science is driven by quotas on publications, and by staying well inside the box, it's not how humans progressed in the past.
*Is* it useful though? It's leaping to propose a solution to a problem that hasn't even been confirmed to exist. While creating new problems.
It staggers me to think that there may be beings in these galaxies billions of light years away, at this moment, looking at our Milky Way and saying it is 28 billion or 13.8 billion years old....but has "too many stars"....and debating how "young" galaxies like ours must be near the beginning of the universe!
Just ordered my copy of your Hardback Book on Amazon. Can't wait to read it!!! Please keep up the great video's!!
This channel and Anton Petrov both put out videos with extremely interesting but also very suspect findings in the last few hours. Both make great content.
I agree about Becky and Petrov, being skeptical or suspecting is a healthy habit. Furthermore, it's a scientist duty. We had horrible experiences in the last few years for not doubting about the propaganda pushed to us in the name of science. The best example is what big pharma sold us as "vaccines" two years ago. Now they are trying to use the same schemes with climate change no less
I love the way Anton delivers his videos. Very straight forward
They both do a great job and repeatedly point out how speculative some of the concepts they explore are. I check for new content on both channels every few days. We are quite fortunate to have such enthusiastic young people to share this fascinating and rapidly evolving subject.
So, good times to be alive! Thanks to JWST and Dr. Becky for bringing this new era of discoveries forward to the public!!!
It's great isn't it! We are all slaves who will starve to death unless you slave away everyday, we havea new piece of propaganda to dribble over though, life is fantastic! 😂
While most if it I don't understand, I love the in depth explanations and all while having a cuppa tea. 😊
I have no doubt in my mind that our "best fit" models for the beginnings of the universe are probably wrong. I love that we live in an age where every new discovery and study pushes us to question everything that we know about the Universe we live in.
The whole idea of science is to determine what we think is real/true until we discover new information. This is the true meaning of a 'theory'. It's also a policy which all good manager's adopt.
Yes previous generations, races and cultures looked up and made up random stories.
Why are you so certain that the best fit models are probably wrong? What are your reasons for why you think thay fail to fit the data?
@@messrsandersonco5985unless it’s about evolution, manmade global warming or Covid “vaccines”
@@carney731because those scientific theories are just tweaked to match observations. You can do it to several SEVERAL theories
I was waiting for this topic and getting anxious about all the misinformation flowing around. Glad you cleared it. Love your videos. ❤
None of it is cleared yet. Not until you go out and confirm it in person.
@@gonegahgah How are they supposed to do that?
Dr. Becky, this is, to a layperson, the most lucid and valuable response to this ongoing debate that I’ve found online. Thank you.
Only 100 years ago we were still arguing about whether there was more than one galaxy. I think we've been too presumptious in thinking we have everything figured out bar the minor details for some time now.
Oh no no. We've got it all down. We are God after all.
@@dayceem who told you how do you know? Did you read the CIA document stating that humans are nothing but energy gods, but I know that’s where you got it from.
Well whats fun about space is that we can never know if we are right at all only for basic stuff, i mean this is what we can see so far using the most advanced telescope built(jwst) we dont even know how big space is
Totally agree yes, tho I stay away from people saying these kinds of things cause it attracts a lot of crackpot scientists 😅
Spot on, I agree fully. It hubris to keep giving us this nonsense as gospel.
For historical interest, in 1980, when I took my first astronomy class, the universe was 20 billion years old.
My teacher back in the 90s also told us that the age of the universe was first said to be around 24 billion, then down to 20, at some point to 18, then 16, then 14. He said "at some point, they'll end up near that estimate of that guy who added the dates of the bible and ended at somewhere near 6000 years."
@@kataseiko😂😂
Well, not exactly. They estimated a range of between 7-20 billion up until the Hubble Telescope helped narrow down uncertainty in the late 90's.
@@kataseikouh. No.
So, right now it is 20,000,000,043 years old.
Kind of like walking out into a field and seeing as far as you can. Then , walk to the furthest thing you see, then another picture with things in the next visual distance. Whom will ever know how large our universe is? Or, how long it's been a universe. Just mind blowing.
I predict the JWST will be replaced by larger, stronger telescopes in the future that will look farther back in time and discover fully formed galaxies many times the size of our own. In short, we’ve got no idea of the size of the universe
Amazing as usual! I love the depth of the explanations and how you go through so many of the concepts to shed light on the information. Many articles I partially read in the past gave a dim idea of what's happening in the field and I now feel like I can get a much better idea how influential an article or paper is on the whole of astrophysics and cosmology.
A photon experience stretching instantaneously because the time stops for a photon?
“Space is hard, words are harder”, basically my life motto
Did you mean 'difficult'?
And I'm the hardest
And never forget that the key word in any ’a new study ...’ headline is ’a’.
Does Spacetime have elasticity...? 🤔
Do you like math numbers (not letters)? I enjoy this channel because of her down to Earth way of explaining everything to us. Keep trying and keep watching.
In my journal club I often ask my group members to look at your videos. MOND paper review was one of thoese. Thank you so much.
Watched the JWST documentary on Netflix yesterday and wasn't disappointed when I saw you in it reacting to the first images from the project!!!
Our smallness, our relative recency, our insignificance in all dimensions just keeps going up.
Humbling, isn't it? Amazing the number of people who can't deal with that.
Respectfully, and in my humble opinion as a scientist, it is a very brave scientist who places more weight (reliability) that the difference in the 'traditional age' vs the 'new suggested age' could possibly be explained by error in Gupta et al's calculating the Red Shift, given we know essentially NOTHING about what makes up 95% of the composition of our Universe! In my opinion Gupta et al's paper is much closer to the "observable thruth" which also dispels the "notion for the Big Band" circa 13.8 billion years ago! [In my 50+ years studying applied chemistry, geology, celestial mechanics, I have always believed "the big bang" was ficticious due simply to the fact of not knowing what 95% of the universe constitutes]. A very good video, nevertheless. Cheers from Down Under
I love these videos! Very captivating science topics, and of course the bloopers are the best! Adding some blooper humor to all this serious science stuff definitely helps to close each video on a light note. Thank you Dr. Becky for bringing us worthwhile science content in an easy to understand format!
Thanks a bunch for all the explanations, dr. Becky! 😊
What I most liked about this study is the free thinking of the author. He's probably wrong, but we need to do it more!
Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
I love physics partially also because of your thank you Dr Becky for this free content!
Always enjoy Dr. Becky's analysis.
I love the bloopers also
Thank you for the great work, this is why we, the viewers, love Dr Becky
definitely brighter, at very least.
I really enjoy your explanations and comparisons involving cosmological hypotheses. I took two years of physics in college, and have done reading in astronomy, etc. ever since.
My math stopped at analytic geometry, but I still appreciate your discussions. Keep educating us!!!
Thank you for making this video. Ever since this news came out I've been trying to wrap my head around it. You provided info in a way that's digestible to us mere mortals.
Side note: I love your nail colour in this video.
Thanks Dr! I've been avoiding a bunch of click-bait-title videos on this waiting for you to lay out the claims in the paper. Well explained!
this is literally a clickbait title
Two questions that my grandkids came up with after watching your video from a while ago and I simply was stumped. 1) If there is another Univers out there, could we collide some day? 2) If the big happened once, could it happen again now? Would that destroy this universe and make a new one? If someone could give me an answer that I can make sense of to them that would be great.
Oh boy, this is the first time I'm this early! Hi dr Smethurst, I really appreciate all you're doing
I really enjoy your videos and the way you explain complex subjects. You have also really inspired my son who couldn’t get qualified answers to his astronomy questions from his teachers at school. We both appreciate your channel and thank you for the time and effort you put into these videos along with making them entertaining. Keep them coming!
Your outro at 14:30 is so, so true. Anyone who's tried to imagine being there at a key time in science' history needs to remember, this IS that time.
Thanks for breaking down Gupta paper for me! I’m surprised that you say that “tired light” is a scattering phenomenon. If that occurred even in the voids (not just in the region close to the source) then space would look foggy - distant sources would become indistinct while the cosmic background would go way up. Scattering causes reddening by deflecting blue photons more than red. Surely Zwicky had something else in mind, like the Sachs-Wolfe effect of photons traveling through deepening potentials.
Tired light could be caused by the estimated 1 trillion white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole binaries that all produce very tiny gravitational waves. Remember that every star that collapsed into a denser object is still out there somewhere and if it's a binary it's been producing gravitational waves since the beginning of time. The waves might be less than the height of a proton but when you add a trillion of them together and every particle of light has to plow through that soup of miniature gravitational waves then it could possibly affect perceived red shift in ways that people are not calculating for. My understanding is astrophysicists simply discount gravitational waves as being insignificant. That belief may come back to bite them one day
Epochs of science and understanding are amazing. I was an astrophysics major (amongst many others in my 18 years at university) before becoming a geography major, a science I refer to affectionately as "the science of how man relates to the universe." This is the sort of stuff that gets me really quivering; the epochs of our understanding. I read this research before you made your first video regarding it and felt the same as you: Skeptical. But that's just good science. I still don't buy it as fact, but it could open a door to us realizing that the universe is actually 18 billion years old. Let's see where the research takes us. 🍻 Cheers, Dr. Smethurst.
Would have loved to have had a science teacher like you when I was in school, I would have probably paid more attention in class as you bring such energy and enthusiasm to your videos.... Thank you
Yeah, it was the teachers fault you didn't pat attention in school lol
@@jeremydyar7566 Yes, actually.
@@BrainInJar stop kidding yourself
@@maythesciencebewithyou a good teacher will keep a kids attention. A good teacher knows how to deal with kids.
Be an adult, take ownership of your past mistakes, and move on.
I was a bad student too.
Everyone here viewing this video is a willing participant. Teachers don't get to choose their students.
Data from JWST has been such a massive leap in our understanding of the cosmos, and we've barely scratched the surface. What a time to be alive. The absolutely gorgeous pictures are a very nice bonus.
I've been very worried for many years about humanity's waning interest in space exploration, space agencies losing funding, and more "local" issues drawing attention away. I hope that JWST and the upcoming Carl Sagan Observatory continue to get more people looking up.
Astronomy has always been more a luxury item than an essential one, at least when it comes to the distant universe. I still believe it should be well funded, for several reasons but we do have more pressing issues to deal with than understanding the age of the universe, so if money is tight...
@@EnglishMikeI couldn’t disagree more!
@@EnglishMikeAstronomy is most definitely not a luxury. Many scientific discoveries were made thanks to space exploration that have transformed our day to day lives. Without astronomy, there is no space exploration. And space exploration gave us important technologies 😊
@@Power_to_the_people567 Space exploration and astronomy are two different things. I certainly agree that much that we have learned through building telescopes and launching them into space, as well as designs of other spacecraft has been beneficial in other walks of life, but as of right now, if -- say -- we had to sacrifice 90% of the world astronomy budget in order to halt or even reverse climate change, then everyone (except those whose livelihoods would be sacrificed) would agree it was worth doing.
JWST is a phenomenon, and I'm very happy it's up there doing great work, but other than satisfying our curiosity, there's not a lot of practical use for it when it comes to improving life here on Earth. It's a luxury because we have the time and money to spare to do these things. It hasn't always been the case.
Loved this video! Was waiting for it ever since I heard about the paper. Dr.Becky just does an excellent job at explaining the nuances what a dope space channel!
Science at its best. Thank you for this video!
Dr Becky rules
☝️
She is just a human, who follows the science of astronomy and communicates that to the public.
@@robertmartin7202yeah. She rules. Synonymous with awesome, she rocks! She’s the greatest! Amazing!
Let me know if you need any help breaking down simple phrases.
@@jennifer7685 That's exactly what I mean!
You talk about her as if she deserves a statue.
I thought she was an astrophysicist, not a geometer.
This really touches on a subject I'm really interested in--our ideas of the differences between stellar evolution in population II and population III stars (and their varying metalicity) and how this affects star formation and creation rates. I'm thinking if we had more data on this, our model for the spread of types of stars we assume in these most distant, older galaxies would change. I need to read this paper for sure.
_"I need to read this paper for sure."_
Don't bother. It is nonsense. And the most distant galaxies we see re low mass and low metallicity. As expected.
A photon experience stretching instantaneously because the time stops for a photon?
I think what we're learning is that our physics is based on too many assumptions and some of them are probably wrong. What we have works only slightly better than guessing after a certain point.
I think this will always be a problem till we truly understand how time actually works and interacts within our universe.
Considering that time is the most accurately measured physical parameter in physics, I think we have a very good understanding of how it works in our universe.
@@stargazer7644Our measurement of time is a construct relative to our own solar system.
People calling things like our understanding of timespace a "very good" understanding of things is why this very video has been made.
It's foolish to believe we have even a slight clue of such phenomenon in the vastness of the universe.
@@johnnymo4000Your measurement of time is only relative to YOU. Time for me flows at a different rate than time does for you. It has nothing to do with where the solar system is.
Thanks for the great explanation of the paper and its weaknesses and of the JWST data it was based on. Your chanell is so much better than others, your way of explanation is so great that you make it understandable without oversimplyfying. It seams natural, but I think there is a lot of hard work behind it. I really apperciate that you explain not only the conclusions but also tha data the conclusions are made of, you show us the graphs and other data visualizations and that you also shares the doubts scientists have about the data and the conclusions. Than enables me to understand the work of astronomers better and astronomy has become a vivid and dynamic science for me.
So we're now moving the goal post? What about the fact that the universe was in major chaos during the rapid expansion of the big bang? Time dilation based on the chaotic conditions would make it virtually impossible to properly determine the time, not to mention the cosmic time clock vs the clock of the rapidly moving galaxies. I'm not convinced we know all the complex factors that should be mathematically factored into time dilation.
I am always skeptical when I hear claims of "oldest star found" or "oldest cluster found" because they omit "yet" or "so far." There's also the question of, "What would a star or cluster look like if it was even older?" Might it be that after a star or cluster reaches a certain age that it becomes undetectable (with current technology) from Earth? In other words, does our technology make it IMPOSSIBLE to find anything older?
There is a critical mass of hydrogen, that has to be reached, before the core pressure and energy builds up, to cause the hydrogen to release photons is reached. Hence the period of around 11 million years before any observation of the beginning of stars can be observed. If they don't meet any other matter, they will turn into black dwarf stars. They will emit some light for billions of years before they become a cold black mass. So they can't be observed unless they pass in front of another light source. I would imagine there are millions spread around the inner circle of the Universe.
And yeah, if they can't be seen, how could you date them? But having said that, there are the other stars that have been created since, which does give something to measure. So it's probable there is only a few billion years between them and the millions of cold black masses we can't observe. So the 'oldest' star is a lump of carbon drifting in space.
But i'm a couch potato and not an astrophysicist. So a pinch of salt is all my thoughts are worth.
A while ago I read a book by an astronomer who went to Australia to search for old stars, by which she meant stars whose spectra show a large proportion of helium relative to hydrogen, that being a stand-in metric for age. That's likely the best metric available today.
@@timothyallen6411 Wouldn't iron content be better? Sure big stars reach this stage sooner, but size could be used for the calculation of age.
@@laurendoe168 Great question. My understanding is that the glowing surface of sun-like stars emits light with spectrum mostly from hydrogen and helium while iron would usually be found deep in the core.
@@timothyallen6411 Yes, but wouldn't older stars "leak" some of the light caused by iron? Sure, light created by a star takes millions of years to reach the surface, but it eventually does.
Thanks for breaking it all down. You & DollarStoreThor (Kyle Hill) are some of the best science educators on YT.
"Space is hard, words are harder" - Dr. Becky
This should be immortalized!
Even if it was, I couldn't read any of these papers in all that time.
Thanks for breaking down this info for us Dr
I suppose the next step for Gupta et al and anyone else that wants to explore it is to find some evidence that the new parameters work as expected, yeah?
(where the age of the observable universe was calculated from a constant expansion rate the observable universe acclerates - the age is probably much older than we think )
I like the idea of light experiencing 'friction' as it travels through space. We often say that space is a vacuum but it's clearly not entirely, it's just that the big bits outshine the little bits.
I can totally understand the idea that there's an effect on light as it travels for billions of years.
Tired light has a scary implication:
There may be a distance far enough away that all photons lose their energy entirely before reaching us, meaning there might be a hard limit on how large our observable universe is, no matter how powerful our optics tech gets.
@@WorldbuildyMcNPCfaceThat's exactly the implication of accelerated expansion. Either scenario ends with the limits of the universe being redshifted into absolute darkness.
Oh God, not the "tired light" stuff again. Literally, "oh God", because the first time I encountered it was arguing with creationists on the internet.
Is "tired light" why I am so sleepy in the morning? ;)
I suspect tired light theory and the expansion of the universe weren't mutually exclusive of one another in the first place. This seems to happen quite often in physics; you get several competing models framed in the popular press as 'competing' with one another when they either complement one another, or otherwise don't mutually exclude. It makes perfect sense that, for objects moving away from us, their light becomes progressively more likely to interact with dust and other material in the intervening space. In the same way that you get a Doppler shift with sound waves travelling through a progressively larger number of air molecules (as in a train moving away from an observer), the light would be likely to lose energy with an increase in distance.
I love the way they put .8 to sound detailed & then just double it & add .7 to sound detailed, again!
Way back in the late 90's I was getting my degree in physic and the whole acceleration of the expanding universe was crushing the theoretical guys. I was a engineering physics major so never really got deep into the cosmology, but I recall one of the proposed "fringe" theories was that the speed of light was slowing down proportional to the inverse of time cubed. (basically the idea was that the universe wasn't accelerating but the meter stick we measured it with was getting shorter) I don't recall the exact equation at the time, however, I seem to recall that it matched the supernova data and would explain the young hot sun and lunar regression mismatch (sedimentary data vs laser measurement). I took my degree and left physics to become a normal engineer and lost touch with all of the in's and outs of this sort of thing. Obviously that never took off of one reason or another. Anyway any thoughts if one of these older ideas that got thrown to the sideline in favor of dark energy might have a better solution.
Or the expansion might be caused by infinite space filled with matter we can't see because it's too far away but an infinity of time has allowed the gravity of that infinite matter to act on our local collection of galaxies. The other option is to believe that space has an edge that our future "starships" will bump into. Yes, silly, but so was sailing off the edge of a flat earth.
Credit to you for engaging an audience of 600k views with such a sprawling subject. I very much enjoyed it, too, as an amateur (and academically challenged) Astro physics enthusiast!
The view count is nearly her subscriber count. No fake subs! 👍
you are thr voice of James Webb in our time, thank you for translating
Scientific community repeat after me; "We dont really know"
That’s exactly what the scientific community is saying. Only they go further and try to find out the answer sometimes by hypothesizing like in this example science is all about hypothesizing and then testing. That’s how we find out what we do know.
@@kaerbearno science is about coming to probable conclusions based on documenting repeatable outcomes to questions/experiments. Guessing blindly is not science .. hypothesising is theorising without evidence or patterning. Again… not science.
@@BeardedGuy_Tawhid I didn’t say guessing, I said hypothesizing. You’re just trying to be pedantic so you can argue for no reason.
If the science community aren’t sure, where do they get their “.8s” and “.7s” from?
If they’re saying they might be out by as much 13 billion years, then the “.8s”/“.7s” are laughably irrelevant.
I’ve never heard of “tired light.”
I’ve been led to believe that Light is the only “constant” in the Universe.🤔
Thanks Dr Becky. Throwing in a wild idea here: is it possible that the mass of the universe itself comes into play at those distances (z=11 or greater) and that causes the horizon of the universe to 'sag' a little bit and that distorts our view of how old the universe is? It's like collective mass of the universe itself curves spacetime ever so slightly away from any observer.
As things get older they do tend to sag.
@@ChristopherFynn001 I knew that !
I wondered if the mass-density of the universe would be a factor. The universe is smaller, the mass is more compacted, gravity is locally more influential, more stuff just comes together faster?
*I always had thoughts of it being larger than we was able to see!*
Without knowledge of the actual size and shape our eyes may only see where it curves other than the beginning.
Didn't someone else already make the case that the early universe stars were simply larger and brighter (one of your videos on how we make an assumption regarding brightness/size of galaxies by comparing them to the size/brightness of our own), and that was the reasoning as to why the galaxies JWST observed appeared so "large" when its more likely smaller galaxies with just really large/bright stars?
She mentions this at 14:12
@@orchdork775 Thanks!
lol😂❤
Yeah, I thought it was way out there as well. Thanks for confirming Dr. Becky!! ❤
P.S. nothing wrong with having a cushion whenever you're sitting on the floor. Regardless of age! 🙂
It's not entirely true that Edwin Hubble first calculated H0. George Lemaître independently calculated it two years prior, but it was published in a lower impact French language journal.
Another factor that I have been thinking of is gravitational density impact since it's known that we have gravitational lensing and the notion that gravity slows down time.
The early universe had a higher mass density since it was smaller, so could that impact the perceived age and actual age of the universe?
26 billion is too old to be playing the field...
This video is kinda great but it has some flaws.
1) claimed tired light were refuted and considered fringe because it failed the tolman and angular distance test, then proceeds a few minutes later to shows a paper were tired light (even without ccc) match the state of the art data while LCDM largely fails those cosmological tests... It is true a few papers with very low quality data claimed refutation of TL in the 90s but since 2005 TL has passed and LCDM failed every modern tolman/angular tests (including via Galex, spitzer, hubble and jwst light curves) It only really shows that cosmology before being a functional science, is an orthodoxy that marginalize competition independently of their empirical validation.
2) Becky links a paper showing the oldest globular clusters are much more recent than Gupta datation, however there were no explanation made as to how the linked paper estimation of the age of those clusters is independent of a model dependent interpretation of redshift, meaning those age estimates are very likely made assuming LCDM and hence are non applicable (circular reasoning).
Even if it were possible to date those clusters in a model independent way (which I doubt), purelly via eddington accretion time,
there have been clusters that have been found to be older than the universe, more accuratelly, 26 years old, consistent with Gupta. This is made possible by studying blue stragglers, which are a special kind of stars that are considerably slower to form
arxiv.org/abs/2401.11549 (worth mentioning it in a video btw)
3) It's a good point that photometric redshifts can be wrong and maybe it was not known 9 months ago (no idea) but we have sinces many too high redshifts confirmed via JWST spectroscopy.
arxiv.org/abs/2405.12665
4) As for reproducing the CMB, the CMB is a belief, it can be perfectly reproduced by cosmic dust rethermalization
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/2197/1/012026/meta
Hope there won't be a new telescope in the future that will show us that the universe is twicer the twice of this twice of the age we now have 😢😅😢
Dr Becky is the first astrophysicist? I've seen on RUclips that I totally wish was living in my state working as a physics professor so I would not have any excuse to not go back to college. At the same time I appreciate every video as they are all well presented and brilliant. The knowledge level and clear love of your field makes all your videos enthralling. I wish everyone transferred information at such an interesting level. First time I have heard of the tired light theory in a long time (I think I read in Kip S Thornes, "Black holes and Time Warps" or a Brian Greene books) Two other incredible educators and physicists. Either way keep sciencing the crap out of everything. Totally rocks!
I totally wish Dr. Becky was living in my house but that would be in an alternate universe.
Ok here is a hypothesis.
Assume the universe is 50 billion years old, however, the distance for light to travel is also larger.
Now assume a galaxy is 51 billion lightyears away, that means the light wont get to us for another billion years. we would be incapable of detecting anything from it.
So it is possible that the universe is much much bigger, and what we are seeing is galaxies etc coming in to sight as the first light transmitted from them is only just starting to be received by us.
If the Universe would indeed turn out to be a lot older than we thought, then wouldn't that put quite a twist on Fermi's Paradox? After all, Aliens would then have had twice a serious amount of the time to reach us one way or the other. Well, time will tell.
We might be too early or too late.
Fermi's paradox is barely a paradox at all
If they had a life span 26 billion years long a space ship that could last 26 billion years (Entropy) a law of physics. That would be based on if they left from the most distant part of the supposed universe. Or how about only one light year away. They better not run out of Dilithium crystals it would really put Scotty in a bind.
@@stephenfrench3888 exactly it asks a question that has an insanely simple answer. why haven't we found aliens yet? because the universe is unknowablely vast and we haven't been looking very long. now if after a few thousand years we go without any evidence of aliens then maybe we take a look at this so called paradox but until then we just need to be patient and enjoy the ride
What if,,,,, other civilizations have been visiting earth all along,,,,,however they found us to be too primitive and war like
to be trusted,, so we are now under quarantine .
Still amazes me how 'young' the universe seems to be.
Right 13b always seemed an overly conservative estimate to me. But I’m no physicist so no place to argue it. But I’m not buying this 27b either. I’ll just assume we have no idea and will never know
Agreed. It is like the universe is brand new. Other thing that is odd is the down right slow moving speed of light. Why so slow? Yes. I'm serious. Then there is dark matter and dark energy, not to mention non-sensical quantum mechanics. Sometimes, I think we must have very flawed theories on the nature of reality. A big thing we assume is correct that is flat wrong.
Measured against the infinite or say the projected lifetimes of red dwarfs in the trillions of years even if the universe was 50 billion years old it would still seem incredibly young! If the current estimates of the very last star winking out in about 100 trillion years 20 billion years is only about 0.002% or in human term about 2.5 months out of 100 years.
@@ctpnk The value in the mid70s was 18 billion years.
@@bassmanjr100 You have weird perceptions. 300,000 km/s is slow? What speed do you prefer?
One of my instructors- an associate professor of physics was an astrophysicist. He admitted that if cosmologists were within two orders of magnitude they called that a good day. 😎 How many ‘impossible objects’ must we find before scientists will admit they are wrong?
The Universe is trillions of years old. I remember as a kid in the 70s, all the Astroscientist knew compared to now, it's just a drop in the Giant Multiverse we live in. We haven't even taken into account the effect dark matter/ gravitational space distortions that effect even the red spectrum. I love watching your show and how passionate you are. Keep those crazy JWST discoveries coming! We have many more years of mind-boggling discoveries to come. So excited!!
I find it refreshing that astrophysics still allows scepticism and recognises the dangers of observational and conformational bias, while other parts of science have become secular religions, where the mere act of questioning is treated as heresy.
14:35 - thankyou so much for emphasising that just because you think the paper is incorrect, doesn't mean it's a bad paper! It gets tiring having people always picking "sides" - we don't have to! You can have multiple contradictory ideas floating around! It's OK! That's just how science works.
LOL silly scientists
Any "evidence" the universe appears older than 5000 years is just proof of what a great job our creator, The FSM, did at making it appear that way!
Five Thousand Years Ago: The Beginning
THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER created the universe and a bunch of planets, including Earth. No one except Himself was around to see it, but we suspect it was rather dull. The initial creation, obviously, must have been spectacular, but He then spent the next ten to one hundred years painstakingly preparing the universe to appear older than it actually is. Photons were placed individually, en route to earth, ostensibly emitted millions of years ago from stars across the galaxy. In reality, we know that each photon was divinely placed and red-shifted appropriately to make the universe appear to be billions of years old. We are still finding His camouflage methods at work today; each time scientists discover apparent evidence of a billions-of-years-old universe, we can be assured that this is just more elaborate preparation He put in place.
LMAO, all hail his noodleness :)
It could be a lot older for all we know, because we're basically limited by the tech to determine the real age.
@6:13 - love your videos, very thought provoking. A bit of a way to sound more educated though, don't say 'less' of something that is incremental in description... Say 'fewer' waves of light - not 'less' of them. If it can be counted - 'fewer', if it is decanted or non-integer in nature - 'less' is okay. "fewer gallons", "less water", etc.
Can't wait until we finally discover that the Universe is infinitely old, infinitely large, infinitely spreading out and then regrouping, and located inside a snow-globe on a shelf somewhere in Derbyshire.
If it's a snow globe situation (if the universe isn't flat), then it wouldn't be infinite.
In fact, if the universe is a snow globe (a 4d snow globe) it would mean if you travelld at super warp speed a straight line, you'd eventually end up where you started. The universe would have a finite "circumference" but in 4D.
If the universe is infinite, then it has to be flat or one of a few other weird shapes (not a snow globe, snow globes are finite).
The universe appears to be flat (infinite), but perhaps that's because we're only seeing a tiny piece of a finite, but really big universe.
Kinda like how most of us personally experience the earth as "flat" due to our limited perspective here on the surface.
But if you traveled in a straight line in a fast jet, you'd eventually find yourself weirdly back where you started.
As you get older time seems to pass more quickly. Perhaps it is the same for the Universe.
As a self educated person (after getting EE degree and attending 5 yrs of Math , physics studies) : I NEVER accepted the Big Bang theory; the models of the universe; or the idea that all life on earth started by chance. Today the Big BAng theory is DISCREDITED as a theory , the Universe has "black holes" , and there are even theories that some living creatures arrive via a meteor collisions.
Way back in recent history, the only media outlet for astronomy was, as he was then, Mr Patrick Moore's The Sky at Night; on one episode, he introduced the idea of HALTON ARP's about quasars, red shift and other controversys. I bought the book from America, somewhat of a feat back then. He had some theory that reminded me of your current post. Lol Pete on the IOW
When I heard that galaxies aren't uniform but have a structure, analogous to being on the connections between soap bubbles, it made me wonder if the expansion of the universe occurs at different rates within the bubbles compared to along the lines?
JWST provides us with gorgeous images ................ just like Dr. Becky 🥰🥰
I don’t know but I am looking forward to a nice cup of tea at the end of the talk.
I love and live on this stuff. The only way we learn is by challenging what we think we know. Like how we still think that everything we have observed is all that there is. Sometimes its not about proving there is more, but simply just not assuming that there isn't, just because we haven't seen it. I think if we are seeing things at greater distances that appear to be older than they should be, then perhaps we need to start thinking about "our" big bang as perhaps being 1, in a sequence of many. The last in a line of a few. It would only make the space that the content is expanding into much older, but It would also explain why we are encountering things, with signs of being older than this current expansion of content. This may also be why there might be things beyond the threshold of our local expansion, that are only just creeping into our view because of JWST? The simplest version of what i'm thinking would be that is the fabric of space we are expanding into if infinite, may house other big bang clusters of content. Our "universe" is local to us, @ 13.9bn years old, but there might be other big bang clusters spread through this fabric in the same way we obvserve galaxies. In reality It's just another layer, but it seems to fit the pattern of stars solar systems galaxies clusters, super clusters, big bang clusters? Just my thoughts. sorry.
I am in agreement with the thinking of Sir Roger Pennrose in that since energy can neither be crated nor destroyed only altered or transmitted then the same principle must apply to existence itself which is also composed of energy. The Higgs field must be an energy field of some description yet unknown. Eternity can do nothing else than exist forever, with no beginning and no end. I think we are only just beginning to discover infinity and the eternal one. Thank you for this illuminating video Dr. Becky.
...And how cool does Hubble look with that pipe indoors!