James Webb Space Telescope 'pushed to its limits' to see most distant galaxies ever

[Admin]

The James Webb Space Telescope may have broken another of its own records, finding potentially five of the earliest and most distant galaxies ever seen.

James Webb Space Telescope 'pushed to its limits' to see most distant galaxies ever : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

""With so little time available, there are not many ways you can form galaxies. "

So, what is it going to take for BBT folks to redo their timing estimates for the evolution since the Big Bang?

And at what "z" value do we need to switch from optical telescopes to radio telescopes?

If we can keep finding galaxies back to "380,000 years after the Big Bang" we would be challenging the assumptions about where the Cosmic Microwave Background comes from.

Seems worth trying to do.

Maybe by a huge radio telescope on the far side of the Moon?

 

[m4n8tpr8b]

Your caption for the diagram with ten sub-diagrams starts "Five candidate galaxies identified by the JWST". Actually, the image shows just one of the five candidates, but in nine different wavelength bands and as a composite of those. (I don't understand how you could have made this mistake as in the article you took the diagram from, the five diagrams with ten sub-diagrams each are themselves sub-diagrams of the same big diagram, Figure 2.)

 

[m4n8tpr8b]

""With so little time available, there are not many ways you can form galaxies. "

So, what is it going to take for BBT folks to redo their timing estimates for the evolution since the Big Bang?

And at what "z" value do we need to switch from optical telescopes to radio telescopes?

If we can keep finding galaxies back to "380,000 years after the Big Bang" we would be challenging the assumptions about where the Cosmic Microwave Background comes from.

Seems worth trying to do.

Maybe by a huge radio telescope on the far side of the Moon?

Galaxy formation is a rather uncertain topic because it involves dark matter, which we still cannot identify, and can only guess its properties. The models (plural) are re-done constantly but they are only competing hypotheses at this point.

JWST is already a telescope more focused on infrared than visual wavelengths, and before we get to radio telescopes, there are far-infrared ones. The cosmic microwave background, which has a redshift of ~1,100, peaks at 160 GHz or 1.9 mm in wavelength terms (with the microwave band extending up to 300 GHz, or down to 1 mm in wavelength terms). The Herschel infrared space telescope's band of sensitivity extended up to 0.672 mm. So a "z" value of about 300 is still IR astronomy territory.

A leap from z = 14-18 to z = 1100 would be a very big leap in finding galaxies, and we would see signs in the WMAP data already. It also needs emphasizing that these z > 10 galaxies that have been found are already exceedingly rare, they already represent regions of space where galaxy formation was faster than in most other places.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I am not so sure that we can say that galaxies with redshifts z>14 are actually "exceedingly rare" at this point. Considering the tiny angle of view by Webb to see them, and the long time that it takes to acquire sufficient light to be detectable, it seems that there must be a pretty significant number of them. And, we really are not resolving them well enough to understand their detailed structure.

Anyway, if we want to really know how many there are and how long ago galaxies really did form, we are going to have to find a way to actually look, because, as you say, the theories are constantly needing revisions whenever we look farther into space and back in time.

And, remember, the actual cause of the CMBR is still only a theory, at this point. Wouldn't you be surprised if it turns our to be something else, and whatever perturbations are in it are not really relevant to galaxy formation at all?

As you say, we don't understand "dark matter" at all. Some people are looking for it to "decay" and provide use with evidence in the electromagnetic energy domain that we can detect. What if it does decay and that emits microwaves? (Not saying that it does, just pointing our how little we really know for sure.)

We are probably going to have to stop thinking that our theories are facts if we really want to advance our understanding.

Webb is already telling us we will need a bigger telescope.

 

[Debunked Theories]

""With so little time available, there are not many ways you can form galaxies. "

So, what is it going to take for BBT folks to redo their timing estimates for the evolution since the Big Bang?

And at what "z" value do we need to switch from optical telescopes to radio telescopes?

If we can keep finding galaxies back to "380,000 years after the Big Bang" we would be challenging the assumptions about where the Cosmic Microwave Background comes from.

Seems worth trying to do.

Maybe by a huge radio telescope on the far side of the Moon?

The Big Bang is one of many theories. A theory is not a scientifically proven fact and could be wrong. Other examples of Astronomical theories that could be mostly wrong is the Superstring theory.

""With so little time available, there are not many ways you can form galaxies. "

So, what is it going to take for BBT folks to redo their timing estimates for the evolution since the Big Bang?

And at what "z" value do we need to switch from optical telescopes to radio telescopes?

If we can keep finding galaxies back to "380,000 years after the Big Bang" we would be challenging the assumptions about where the Cosmic Microwave Background comes from.

Seems worth trying to do.

Maybe by a huge radio telescope on the far side of the Moon?

The Big Bang Theory is a theory. Just like other astronomical theories like superstring theory which like all theories may be proven wrong in the future. Many past astronomical theories have been proven wrong and have to be adjusted or discarded entirely.