Astronomers discovered 1M new galaxies in 300 hours(blog.physics-astronomy.com)
blog.physics-astronomy.com
Astronomers discovered 1M new galaxies in 300 hours
https://blog.physics-astronomy.com/2022/09/astronomers-just-discovered-1-million.html
119 comments
IMHO, not very much. Scientists would be all over it, trying to measure and study what they found. The public at large would speculate wildly on what the aliens would look like, what their society or philosophy would be like, etc. But in the absence of any new information, interest would die out and it would be just another bit of knowledge that humans adapt to, sort of like when heliocentrism took over or when evolution was discovered.
And there would be denialists and conspiracy theorists, people who would blame it on some group as an effort to change their deeply held beliefs and views.
And there would be denialists and conspiracy theorists, people who would blame it on some group as an effort to change their deeply held beliefs and views.
I disagree.
Religions would face a huge obstacle in bridging their creation myths, more people would become atheist and non-religious.
Knowing something is possible is a hugely motivating factor. The department of defense and every international analog would want bigger and bolder weapons, money would pour into science. We'd fund astronomy and space exploration orders of magnitude more. There would be a renewed push for humans on Mars and beyond.
We'd want to know if alien life was biological or an AGI. We'd push harder on our own advances, but also become more aware of how this acceleration affects us.
We'd keep looking for life in our backyard. We'd be worried about it. Popular science and science fiction would communicate that risk and would lead to new cultural overtones. Zombies and superhero movies get replaced with alien invasion films.
I think we'd accelerate everything.
Edit: my post is proving controversial because of my statement on religion, which totally flies over my main point. With regard to religion: (1) I haven't made any value judgments, (2) the impact of science, technology, and modern culture has deceased religiously in the West measurably. I should think incontrovertible proof of alien life would only contribute to this trend.
Religions would face a huge obstacle in bridging their creation myths, more people would become atheist and non-religious.
Knowing something is possible is a hugely motivating factor. The department of defense and every international analog would want bigger and bolder weapons, money would pour into science. We'd fund astronomy and space exploration orders of magnitude more. There would be a renewed push for humans on Mars and beyond.
We'd want to know if alien life was biological or an AGI. We'd push harder on our own advances, but also become more aware of how this acceleration affects us.
We'd keep looking for life in our backyard. We'd be worried about it. Popular science and science fiction would communicate that risk and would lead to new cultural overtones. Zombies and superhero movies get replaced with alien invasion films.
I think we'd accelerate everything.
Edit: my post is proving controversial because of my statement on religion, which totally flies over my main point. With regard to religion: (1) I haven't made any value judgments, (2) the impact of science, technology, and modern culture has deceased religiously in the West measurably. I should think incontrovertible proof of alien life would only contribute to this trend.
Most religious creation myths are already disproven by evolution, age of earth and many other things.
If religiosity was based on rational weighing of evidence, it would already be gone. But that's the wrong model. There is not enough room to describe the right model in this margin :)
Also, new religions arise all the time, which can incorporate the latest data.
If religiosity was based on rational weighing of evidence, it would already be gone. But that's the wrong model. There is not enough room to describe the right model in this margin :)
Also, new religions arise all the time, which can incorporate the latest data.
Religiosity is based on a rational weighing of evidence... according to the person's individual understanding of the world.
That's why I tend to agree with echelon.
There's a big difference in the ability to ignore genetic statistics and measurements strongly proving evolution... and "Aliens exist."
The latter would more deeply penetrate the average person's understanding, and hence couldn't be ignored and would have to be incorporated into religious worldviews. It'd look a lot like the geocentric to heliocentric conversion, except bigger.
And like heliocentricity, an extraterrestrial civilization existing would only accumulate further alternate evidence over time, which would crowd dogmatic denialists into tighter and tighter corners.
That's why I tend to agree with echelon.
There's a big difference in the ability to ignore genetic statistics and measurements strongly proving evolution... and "Aliens exist."
The latter would more deeply penetrate the average person's understanding, and hence couldn't be ignored and would have to be incorporated into religious worldviews. It'd look a lot like the geocentric to heliocentric conversion, except bigger.
And like heliocentricity, an extraterrestrial civilization existing would only accumulate further alternate evidence over time, which would crowd dogmatic denialists into tighter and tighter corners.
> Religiosity is based on a rational weighing of evidence... according to the person's individual understanding of the world.
We think that's how our brains work, but in reality unconscious processes decide what would be an advantageous belief to have, and another part (sometimes called "the press secretary") comes up with a rationalization that we believe is really why.
We think that's how our brains work, but in reality unconscious processes decide what would be an advantageous belief to have, and another part (sometimes called "the press secretary") comes up with a rationalization that we believe is really why.
It's not that black and white, because there's also socialization and societal drift.
One can not simply opt to not believe what everyone around them accepts.
One can not simply opt to not believe what everyone around them accepts.
Agreed. That's part of what I meant.
Some part of you realizes that it's better to fit in with the society you're part of than to take a stand for the truth of atheism. And so you become a believer.
Some part of you realizes that it's better to fit in with the society you're part of than to take a stand for the truth of atheism. And so you become a believer.
> Religions would face a huge obstacle in bridging their creation myths
Counter point. Religions with a very rigid view of highly sentient life being unique to earth and humans would have a hard time. Others would say that the universe produces sentience wherever it can and it is fundamental to the universe. You see this sort of idea, of sentience permeating the cosmos, in pantheistic and / or less antropocentric religions. It would be seen by some as a validation.
Religious worldviews are very diverse.
Counter point. Religions with a very rigid view of highly sentient life being unique to earth and humans would have a hard time. Others would say that the universe produces sentience wherever it can and it is fundamental to the universe. You see this sort of idea, of sentience permeating the cosmos, in pantheistic and / or less antropocentric religions. It would be seen by some as a validation.
Religious worldviews are very diverse.
> Religions would face a huge obstacle in bridging their creation myths
Religions have faced and easily overcome that obstacle countless times.
Religions have faced and easily overcome that obstacle countless times.
They don't have to follow logic, which makes them pretty resilient.
Have I got some reading that's going to knock your socks off. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/
Example, in modern concise English: https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/aqu...
Original excerpt: https://homepages.uc.edu/~martinj/The%20Infinite/Aquinas%20-...
As an atheist and a scientist, Aquinas' works are still amazing to me.
Example, in modern concise English: https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/aqu...
Original excerpt: https://homepages.uc.edu/~martinj/The%20Infinite/Aquinas%20-...
As an atheist and a scientist, Aquinas' works are still amazing to me.
I trust you don’t know many Jesuits…
Given how much religiosity has declined I don’t think that’s true at all.
Religions have survived declines before; the Catholic Church counts 1.3 billion adherents despite the Reformation. New ones crop up, too; perhaps a thousand years from now Scientology will be the world's largest.
There's plenty of evidence that religions can survive doctrinal challenges; Catholics largely decided evolution was God's mechanism for creation, while some Protestants decided it was a Satanic trick.
There's plenty of evidence that religions can survive doctrinal challenges; Catholics largely decided evolution was God's mechanism for creation, while some Protestants decided it was a Satanic trick.
The real challenge evolution puts to the Judeo-Christian creation story is not the physical creation of the universe (which most denominations do not take to be literal), but that man’s knowledge of good and evil sets us apart from the rest of creation. Evolution would say a human beings moral sense is simply an evolutionary response to the environment rather than “good” and “evil” being real things.
You don't need much imagination to come up with some sort of apologetic for that concept; "oh, God set evolution in motion, and didn't instill souls until we got to a certain point". It's very doable.
Look at things like Sabbath elevators and the 18 miles of fishing line that rings Manhattan (https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...). Religion is ever-flexible; humans are clever when motivated to come up with a solution.
Look at things like Sabbath elevators and the 18 miles of fishing line that rings Manhattan (https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...). Religion is ever-flexible; humans are clever when motivated to come up with a solution.
Whenever someone says 'religions' in the western hemisphere, it usually means Christianity. E.g. Islam fundamentally will not have a crisis even if alien life is discovered because it doesn't disprove the existence and oneness of a Creator which is Islam's strict monotheism denotes.
The problem isn't that theology cannot be harmonized with intelligent alien life, it's that such an expansion of the universe would highlight the hyper-provincialism of an already highly provincial religion.
I'd assume Islam would have a pretty tough time too, as the centuries of accreted dogma needed to be updated from a human-centric to intelligent-life-centric perspective.
The stronger the dogma, the more heretical change is. And there are a lot of very dogmatic Islamic branches.
The stronger the dogma, the more heretical change is. And there are a lot of very dogmatic Islamic branches.
I think most religions would have a harder time if no life was found elsewhere in the universe. I am religious and my religions teaches that ours is only one of an innumerable number of worlds that God has created and populated. We expect to find intelligent life everywhere in the universe.
i think religion that we are created by alien exists.
I think you're underestimating the effect of evolution. But at the same time, evolution already did most of the work that discovering aliens might have done, so I think you're right in your conclusions.
It would accelerate technology a bit by giving conclusive proof that some things — fusion drives, megastructures — are not only possible but seen as desirable by another civilization. So they at least aren’t total dead ends, therefore worth investing in.
> And there would be denialists and conspiracy theorists, people who would blame it on some group as an effort to change their deeply held beliefs and views.
Given recent experience with other incontrovertible things like climate change and COVID, and the public's plummeting trust of science, technology, experts, and institutions, I'd guess the denialists would be more than a handful, probably more than 50%. Right off the bat, most devout Christians will deny it as a hoax since it calls into question more of their holy book's version of history. If the announcement is made by anyone associated with the government, like NASA, an additional 40% or so of the population will deny it because it was announced by the government of "the other" political party. Beyond that, you have the growing band of professional contrarians who will deny it simply because an expert discovered it--the more incontrovertible the evidence is, the stronger they will deny it and be convinced they're right. There will be many calls to "do your own research [on YouTube]".
I fear the world would just keep on chugging along, with the majority in denial, ridiculing "those silly ivory tower elites thinking they know everything with their telescopes and education".
Given recent experience with other incontrovertible things like climate change and COVID, and the public's plummeting trust of science, technology, experts, and institutions, I'd guess the denialists would be more than a handful, probably more than 50%. Right off the bat, most devout Christians will deny it as a hoax since it calls into question more of their holy book's version of history. If the announcement is made by anyone associated with the government, like NASA, an additional 40% or so of the population will deny it because it was announced by the government of "the other" political party. Beyond that, you have the growing band of professional contrarians who will deny it simply because an expert discovered it--the more incontrovertible the evidence is, the stronger they will deny it and be convinced they're right. There will be many calls to "do your own research [on YouTube]".
I fear the world would just keep on chugging along, with the majority in denial, ridiculing "those silly ivory tower elites thinking they know everything with their telescopes and education".
> professional contrarians who will deny it simply because an expert discovered it
I don't think that's why professional contrarians deny things: they do so because it makes them $$$.
I don't think that's why professional contrarians deny things: they do so because it makes them $$$.
Of course, we will be studying their every move. Enormous amounts of money will be spent on new devices specifically to study them.
Or made from what was learned
Many bright young minds would be lured into PhD programs.
We’ll be studying what they did a long time ago, as it takes many years for their light to reach us. We’ll be studying their history.
It would be far more surprising if somehow how it was discovered incontrovertibly that Earth hosts the only life in the Universe.
I wonder how such a proof would look like lol. God coming here to tell us?
What if Earth's spinning core is incredibly rare or unique? How would life evolve without a magnetosphere? What if it not only takes a magnetosphere but precisely one moon of just the right size and period?
We estimate there are two trillion galaxies.
We think our galaxy has 100 billion planets.
"Incredibly rare" isn't rare with those numbers, and "unique" is vanishingly unlikely. The chances of there being a planetary formation scenario that happens only once in 2^23 iterations is... low.
> How would life evolve without a magnetosphere?
Our magnetosphere isn't even unique in this solar system; Jupiter has an immensely strong one. We've likely detected at least one on an extrasolar planet (http://data.iap.fr/doi/bjaffel/20210727/). Plus, Earth-style life needs a magnetosphere; that doesn't mean all life does.
We think our galaxy has 100 billion planets.
"Incredibly rare" isn't rare with those numbers, and "unique" is vanishingly unlikely. The chances of there being a planetary formation scenario that happens only once in 2^23 iterations is... low.
> How would life evolve without a magnetosphere?
Our magnetosphere isn't even unique in this solar system; Jupiter has an immensely strong one. We've likely detected at least one on an extrasolar planet (http://data.iap.fr/doi/bjaffel/20210727/). Plus, Earth-style life needs a magnetosphere; that doesn't mean all life does.
> We think our galaxy has 100 billion planets.
That pool reduces quickly eliminating all planets without surface temperatures permitting liquid water, and of the right mass to permit something to grow. Among those, how many have a magnetosphere for billions of years, water, and the right amount of selenium to permit cell growth but not enough to poison everything? Consider also that the Sun may not even be from this galaxy. Maybe its galactic migration, the Milky Way cannibalizing its host possibly dwarf galaxy, had something to do with it. It makes our circumstances even rarer.
I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here. Of course there's other life in the Universe, likely intelligent life. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.
That pool reduces quickly eliminating all planets without surface temperatures permitting liquid water, and of the right mass to permit something to grow. Among those, how many have a magnetosphere for billions of years, water, and the right amount of selenium to permit cell growth but not enough to poison everything? Consider also that the Sun may not even be from this galaxy. Maybe its galactic migration, the Milky Way cannibalizing its host possibly dwarf galaxy, had something to do with it. It makes our circumstances even rarer.
I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here. Of course there's other life in the Universe, likely intelligent life. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.
All of these points assume Earth-style life is the only option; like a desert animal deeming the Amazon too wet to support life. That is highly unlikely to be the case.
That would indeed be suprising from a logistical standpoint. How would we manage it?
There's debate over whether viruses qualify, and trillions of planets to check for microscopic stuff.
There's debate over whether viruses qualify, and trillions of planets to check for microscopic stuff.
The question is ill posed. If there is incontrovertible scientific evidence, then they are already “physically” here. I presume the distinction the parent is trying to make is between some form of electromagnetic radiation, versus chunks of matter, but if it’s some form of signal, then they are interacting with us, physically.
The qualificatiom I made in my question was to ask what the effect eould be on us if there was no two way exchange of information. We see them, they're far away, they are unaware of us or don't care.
I see this as the most likely alien discovery scenario, because so far we haven't seen any, so they are probably pretty far away.
I see this as the most likely alien discovery scenario, because so far we haven't seen any, so they are probably pretty far away.
Of course, we could finally stop hating each other and hate the aliens instead.
I’ve thought about the idea of exporting political dissent to a fake alien threat. “We’ve always been at war with South East Alpha Centauri.” People who find out its fake would be incentivized to keep the charade going those who do not would be labeled cranks. Though I can’t help but think that without political dissent we’d quickly end up with feudalism.
> I’ve thought about the idea of exporting political dissent to a fake alien threat.
Heh, predictions of precisely such a scheme have been popular among conspiracy theorists for years. "Project Blue Beam" and the like. It's also the premise of the Watchmen comic book.
Heh, predictions of precisely such a scheme have been popular among conspiracy theorists for years. "Project Blue Beam" and the like. It's also the premise of the Watchmen comic book.
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Why not both?
The worst part about how awful the Warhammer 40k universe is IMO is how very human the Imperium is. They hate the xenos. They hate the heretics. They hate themselves, each other, and everything else.
Hate! Hate! Hate! An emotion as pure as it is deep! Hate! Hate! Hate! Let it flow, let it run free!
—Inspirational Verse, Imperial Hymnal Vol. IV
Humans rarely stop hating one another because of a foreign threat, instead we just add more hate to the pile. Quite depressing.
The worst part about how awful the Warhammer 40k universe is IMO is how very human the Imperium is. They hate the xenos. They hate the heretics. They hate themselves, each other, and everything else.
Hate! Hate! Hate! An emotion as pure as it is deep! Hate! Hate! Hate! Let it flow, let it run free!
—Inspirational Verse, Imperial Hymnal Vol. IV
Humans rarely stop hating one another because of a foreign threat, instead we just add more hate to the pile. Quite depressing.
Have you ever watched "All Tomorrows: The Future of Humanity"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imNtSPM3-r4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imNtSPM3-r4
You can find a possible scenario in the 'The Three body problem' book by Liu Cixin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(nove...
> But vey far away, no question of it physically coming here
If you can see them far away it doesn't mean they are not also close by and you can't see them.
You should update "there are aliens close by" to a much higher probability
If you can see them far away it doesn't mean they are not also close by and you can't see them.
You should update "there are aliens close by" to a much higher probability
You’d see world wide massive effort trying to understand and try to extract as much info from that to be used here. Maybe even all countries pooling resources to build something that can extract as much as possible
I’d like to believe that we’ve already found evidence of an expanding technological civilization only 1500 light years away, and civilization has barely changed at all: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac3416 (note: not very serious, pretty unlikely, but fun to think about.)
It's most likely to be dust getting in the way. Who knows?
Maybe it's a dyson sphere, maybe not. Any stellar engineering project will /probably/ be ambiguous enough that discovery of other industrial life will be a slow gradual process like most scientific discoveries. With fractionally more of the populace accepting the premise with each piece of accumulated evidence.
> But vey far away, no question of it physically coming here.
That we know of. Who knows if Alcubierre drives work.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
That we know of. Who knows if Alcubierre drives work.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
"If exotic matter with the correct properties cannot exist, then the drive cannot be constructed" seems like a fairly hefty obstacle at this point.
Plus, any FTL signal will violate causality.
The speed of light being a speed limit is a consequence of the geometry of spacetime. I'm convinced FTL is as impossible as it is to have an angle greater than 180 degree between two lines in Euclidean geometry.
The speed of light being a speed limit is a consequence of the geometry of spacetime. I'm convinced FTL is as impossible as it is to have an angle greater than 180 degree between two lines in Euclidean geometry.
> Plus, any FTL signal will violate causality.
I have to say I'm uncomfortable with the idea that we've discovered everything there is to know about the physical rules of the universe.
I have to say I'm uncomfortable with the idea that we've discovered everything there is to know about the physical rules of the universe.
We've definitely discovered that the speed of light is a constant in all reference frames. That's sufficient (IIRC anyway) for FTL to violate causality, regardless of whatever we may discover in the future.
Well we have only ever measured the round trip speed of light. Our current understanding of physics seems definitely imply the one way speed should be the same, but we have not been able measure it. If it some reason does turn out to be different then rate at which causality moves then depends on direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-way_speed_of_light
Maybe it suffices to say that as long as all experiments continue to be consistent with light being the same speed in all directions, all experiments will also continue to be consistent with FTL breaking causality, so bringing up a barely, hypothetically possible conspiracy of reality against experiment is a distraction at best.
Me too, and that is indeed not what I said.
"I'm convinced FTL is as impossible", with causality as the apparent reason, would seem to imply a belief that we understand that particular concept fully.
It is as firm as our understanding of gravity. There is still plenty left to learn about gravity, but if I throw a ball into the air I'm pretty damned certain it will fall back to the ground. The fundamentality of c as a limit of information propagation is one of those properties that has shown itself to be true so often that anything showing it false is considered a mistake until we can prove otherwise. Conservation laws are similar.
Sure, any reasonable scientist would tell you that there is a non-zero chance that we're wrong about these things and both perpetual motion and FTL are actually possible, it's just that we have an extremely high confidence they're not.
Sure, any reasonable scientist would tell you that there is a non-zero chance that we're wrong about these things and both perpetual motion and FTL are actually possible, it's just that we have an extremely high confidence they're not.
[deleted]
"no question of it physically coming here" was a premise of the question, not a consequence. Viability of Alcubierre drives would invalidate the whole scenario.
I wonder what it would do to most religions in particular.
What would that change for religious people? There’s already tons of contradictions uncovered by science that conflict with religions in many ways (such as the earth being older than 5,000 years), the believers won’t ever budge.
"Sweet, somewhere new to send missionaries!"
"Omg, God is amazing!"
> In under 300 hours, the world-renowned CSIRO telescope in Australia surveyed the whole southern sky in amazing detail and record time, discovering 3 million previously unseen galaxies.
Not to take away from the work that the astronomers have done to achieve this but...
It is interesting that it must have been the machinery that did the heavy lifting, even if astronomers, mathematicians, programmers, etc made those machines. These lines get much blurrier with ML and will continue on that path.
Not to take away from the work that the astronomers have done to achieve this but...
It is interesting that it must have been the machinery that did the heavy lifting, even if astronomers, mathematicians, programmers, etc made those machines. These lines get much blurrier with ML and will continue on that path.
Original press release, 1 December 2020: https://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2020/Australian-t...
When I hear numbers like this, my gut tells me that there must be life out there somewhere.
What if the probability of life emerging on a random planet is less than 10^-40? All we can say for certain is that this probability is strictly between 0 and 1.
The number of galaxies is mind boggingly large (around 100 billion in the observable universe), and the number of planets even larger, but there is no reason that the probability of life couldn't be even more mind boggingly small.
The number of galaxies is mind boggingly large (around 100 billion in the observable universe), and the number of planets even larger, but there is no reason that the probability of life couldn't be even more mind boggingly small.
Indeed it doesn’t even need to be that small — even a 10^-28 chance makes it unlikely to have arisen anywhere else in the observable universe.
Newer observations suggest 200 billion with an average of 100 million stars per galaxy and 3-10 planets per star. 60,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets on the low end? Yeesh.
Yes these are huge numbers, but quantities associated with physical space (# of objects) are nothing compared with quantities in combinatorial spaces (# of possible 256 bit passwords or # of possible games of chess).
It seems plausible that getting the sustained chain reaction of life going in a soup of organic molecules and not immediately interrupting it may be at least as unlikely as randomly guessing a 256 bit password, in which case it will certainly never have happened a second time in the volume of space time we call the “observable universe”.
It seems plausible that getting the sustained chain reaction of life going in a soup of organic molecules and not immediately interrupting it may be at least as unlikely as randomly guessing a 256 bit password, in which case it will certainly never have happened a second time in the volume of space time we call the “observable universe”.
So what? 40 zeros after the decimal point should make you go "Yeesh" even harder.
It honestly did after I thought about it more.
For some perspective 70b sandgrains in one cubic meter sand… so they found 100x3x6 cubes of sandgrains…
The time aspect is important.
Life on Earth took 10 billion years from the Big Bang to emerge. No evidence indicates any other planet did it before us.
I think most galaxies we see are younger than that.
Life on Earth took 10 billion years from the Big Bang to emerge. No evidence indicates any other planet did it before us.
I think most galaxies we see are younger than that.
Me too but it also tells me we’ll never get anywhere close to any of it
Arbitrary large-sounding numbers have this deceptive power over people’s perceptions.
Yeah I think it’s irrational to think we’re the only ones
Maybe. But at this point, earth is pretty much a fluke already. Game changing if we are the only one .. (yep not changing anything but still completely stunning)
Life existing outside Earth doesn't seem unlikely to me. Even sapient life.
It all breaks down at some point for it to be interstellar or maybe even properly interplanetary.
It all breaks down at some point for it to be interstellar or maybe even properly interplanetary.
Our single example of life has already shown that getting objects to other planets is possible. There shouldn't be any fundamental barriers beyond what we've already accomplished. It's a matter of engineering and resources at this point.
Unless you mean something very different by "properly", it's pretty clear that there will be multiplanetary life out there if it exists at all.
Unless you mean something very different by "properly", it's pretty clear that there will be multiplanetary life out there if it exists at all.
I would put the scale far beyond simply getting objects around. Let's say consistent regular traffic and colonies capable of multi-decade or century life support.
The engineering and resources really start to look lot harder if you push it to meaningful population numbers. Let's say couple hundred or thousand on regular basis.
The engineering and resources really start to look lot harder if you push it to meaningful population numbers. Let's say couple hundred or thousand on regular basis.
There probably was or will be. Whether it will coincide with life on our planet is probably a little less likely, although not ruled out in any way.
Potentially dumb question: when astronomers see a new galaxy, how do they know it’s never been discovered before? Is there some database of known galaxies that they use? Presumably there’s something measurable that they’re using to identify galaxies as well.
Every object in the sky has precise absolute coordinates. As far as I know, there is not a comprehensive database of all sky objects but several databases from different sky surveys that map only a part of the sky. To check if the object is new, you just look up the coordinates in a program that aggregates all the different databases, like Simbad (https://simbad.cds.unistra.fr)
Does the current location of the earth affect that coordinate system at all, or i is negligible due to distances?
They use a Galactic Coordinate System, which is actually centered on the Sun, in the plane of the galaxy. (The sun does revolve around the galaxy, but with a period of millions of years it doesn't make a measurable difference.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_coordinate_system
It can easily be transformed into telescope pointing directions with the input of location on the planet, time of year and time of day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_coordinate_system
It can easily be transformed into telescope pointing directions with the input of location on the planet, time of year and time of day.
Up to ~300 light years away this effect can be used to estimate the distance to a star.
For other galaxies the effect is very much indistinguishable from 0.
https://lco.global/spacebook/distance/parallax-and-distance-...
For other galaxies the effect is very much indistinguishable from 0.
https://lco.global/spacebook/distance/parallax-and-distance-...
It's not how many that get me excited, it's the discovery of galaxies so ancient they were formed "shortly" (300-400 million years) after the cosmic dawn
https://www.colorado.edu/ness/science/cosmic-dawn
The Milky Way in comparison was 14 BILLION years later (vs half billion)
Any life with a few billion years headstart over humans might have figured out FTL travel or at least FTL communication (massless)
adding: yup, I screwed up on Milky Way age vs cosmos age, cosmos roughly 14 billion years, Milky Way first stars roughly 1 billion years after cosmos started
https://www.colorado.edu/ness/science/cosmic-dawn
The Milky Way in comparison was 14 BILLION years later (vs half billion)
Any life with a few billion years headstart over humans might have figured out FTL travel or at least FTL communication (massless)
adding: yup, I screwed up on Milky Way age vs cosmos age, cosmos roughly 14 billion years, Milky Way first stars roughly 1 billion years after cosmos started
Where did you get the number? Our solar system alone formed 5 billion years ago (i.e. 9 Gy after the big bang). The milky way is thought to have formed something like 1 Gy after the big bang.
Or perhaps they all cook themselves by releasing too much energy over the course of about 300 years of exponential growth...
I could imagine that climate change is a filter for all technological civilizations. (I'm convinced that all life must be based on carbon, so that's my base assumption for the sake of this comment.) Civilizations that exist before fossil fuels had the time to form won't become technological, and all technological civilizations must keep the window from the beginning of industrialization to the ability of producing sufficient clean energy small enough to keep their planet habitable. Clean energy meaning either using only solar and wind while keeping consumption low or inventing fusion quickly enough. (Not sure about fission.)
As someone who isn't too well versed on the topic, how are you so certain in your belief that all life is carbon based?
It's the only element that is able to form complex molecules (because it can form four bonds) besides silicon. Plus, it works well with wates as a solvent, which is plentiful.
With silicon there are a bunch of issues. The bonds aren't as stable, so everything would have to be extremely cold, which makes chemical reactions very slow. Also organisms would exhale sand, which is not ideal.
Carbon and water are just uniquely qualified as a basis for life.
If you say life may be possible without complex chemistry then I'd be interested in your arguments. In my experience that line of reasoning boils down to "just because we can't imagine it doesn't mean it's impossible". Maybe, but I'm unable to discuss things neither you or me can imagine.
With silicon there are a bunch of issues. The bonds aren't as stable, so everything would have to be extremely cold, which makes chemical reactions very slow. Also organisms would exhale sand, which is not ideal.
Carbon and water are just uniquely qualified as a basis for life.
If you say life may be possible without complex chemistry then I'd be interested in your arguments. In my experience that line of reasoning boils down to "just because we can't imagine it doesn't mean it's impossible". Maybe, but I'm unable to discuss things neither you or me can imagine.
I think that's one scenario of the Fermi paradox.
Or maybe they couldn’t because their early galaxies lacked heavy elements. Or anything FTL is simply impossible.
My current science obsession is "how much iron is in the sun?" This is an especially fun rabbit hole to explore because the theorys range from "fractional percentages" to "the sun is the stellar remnant of an exploded star and most of it is iron".
The fractional percentage camp is based off the observed spectrum. the most of it camp is based off observed material composition in the solar system.
Here is the stellar remnant theory. I found it a bit extreme, but fun to think about.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0410/0410569.pdf
Personally I would bet on the sun(as it is a second generation star)having a more substantial iron core than first thought, probably a quarter of the mass, too much iron, there would be no fusion, but it does not make any sense to me that as full of iron as the inner solar system is there would be negligible amounts in the center of the sun. Perhaps there is an unknown mechanism that prevents the iron from creating photons to sus out with spectrography(my guess is the thousands of kilometers of hydrogen around the core).
The fractional percentage camp is based off the observed spectrum. the most of it camp is based off observed material composition in the solar system.
Here is the stellar remnant theory. I found it a bit extreme, but fun to think about.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0410/0410569.pdf
Personally I would bet on the sun(as it is a second generation star)having a more substantial iron core than first thought, probably a quarter of the mass, too much iron, there would be no fusion, but it does not make any sense to me that as full of iron as the inner solar system is there would be negligible amounts in the center of the sun. Perhaps there is an unknown mechanism that prevents the iron from creating photons to sus out with spectrography(my guess is the thousands of kilometers of hydrogen around the core).
The Milky Way probably formed about the same era as those galaxies, we just see it 13.7Gy older because it's 13.7Gly closer.
FTL isn't massless, massless means exactly the speed of light. Imaginary mass (as in multiples of the square root of minus one) would be FTL if such things exist.
FTL isn't massless, massless means exactly the speed of light. Imaginary mass (as in multiples of the square root of minus one) would be FTL if such things exist.
I don’t think I’m a dumb person. There’s some complex stuff I can understand, but whenever this comes up, I just can’t wrap my head around the shape of the universe and why is it exactly that the universe started somewhere and now I can look far enough in any direction and see not only that place, but also in the time it happened. Mind boggling.
It didn't start somewhere. The Big Bang happened at all points in space. It happened "everywhere".
We’re inside an inflating balloon and the space inside is a giant gobstopper where each layer is spherical movie projector screen we can watch a movie on of different moments in time.
If we’re not literally on the edge of the balloon is someone else looking back in time at us?
If we’re not literally on the edge of the balloon is someone else looking back in time at us?
That's true except also every other point in space is at the center of its own balloon. The balloon has no edge, the movies just become too dark to see past a certain distance.
Too dark and yet also too bright: the fun combination of a plasma so hot and bright it's opaque being redshifted so hard it's the darkest blackest void anyone has seen.
With these numbers I always wonder how many consider the aspect of what was around when these systems formed. As in elements. For more heavier stuff you need some stellar formations and breakdowns. So true range when technologically capable life with let's say plentiful iron and other stuff is more limited. Not to even consider building blocks for life like carbon and so on.
There weren't any elements heavier than lithium to form life with that early. (there's a compelling argument that there wasn't enough phosphorus until recently/locally, but that's another question)
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This is really cool but I feel the title should have the [2020] in it for reference.
Yeah, I assumed this was a Webb discovery.
JWST has unmatched sensitivity for galaxy searches but a fairly narrow field of view. To cover the same area as this survey (whole southern sky) would take about 15 million JWST frames.
I always find these kinds of discoveries a little sad. Why? Because we are mostly seeing things that are permanently out of reach. Anything beyond about a billion light years away is moving awa from us so fast that even moving a significant percentage of the speed of light we would never be able to reach.
And we're seeing things where the light has been travelling for 10+ billion years. The objects themselves might be 40B+ light years away (due to universe expansion). The estimate on the current observable universe is 94B LY across or a radius of 47B LY. That means we can only possibly reach 1/100,000th of the entire observable universe and this is the theoretical limit.
It may reach the point that we eventually spot clear evidence of a spacefaring civilization (eg we could detect a K3 civilization from billions of light years away) and have no hope of ever reaching or even communicating with them.
Maybe that's just as well otherwise we'd be extinguished like a bug at some point.
Still, the universe is so incredibly vast (arguably the actual universe is infinite) but almost all of it is permanently out of reach.
And we're seeing things where the light has been travelling for 10+ billion years. The objects themselves might be 40B+ light years away (due to universe expansion). The estimate on the current observable universe is 94B LY across or a radius of 47B LY. That means we can only possibly reach 1/100,000th of the entire observable universe and this is the theoretical limit.
It may reach the point that we eventually spot clear evidence of a spacefaring civilization (eg we could detect a K3 civilization from billions of light years away) and have no hope of ever reaching or even communicating with them.
Maybe that's just as well otherwise we'd be extinguished like a bug at some point.
Still, the universe is so incredibly vast (arguably the actual universe is infinite) but almost all of it is permanently out of reach.
At least we can still see them. At some point in the future, everything but our local group will have receded behind the cosmic horizon.
These 300 hours happened 3 years ago in 2020.
Megastructures, the exhausts from fusion drives, etc. No question about it.
But vey far away, no question of it physically coming here.
Would that in itself have significant effect on human society, and if so, what would it be?