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Speaker 1: And Daniel, what are the chances that physics is wrong?

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Speaker 1: I would guess something about What do you mean everything

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Speaker 1: you've been telling us is wrong? There's percent chance that

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Speaker 1: we don't have everything right? So what are we even

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Speaker 1: doing here? What do we pay you for them? Well?

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Speaker 1: You know our idea right now is sure to be wrong,

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Speaker 1: but it's the least wrong theory we've ever built. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's good. I always aim to be the least wrong

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Speaker 1: person in the room. But what does that mean? Does

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Speaker 1: that mean the other theories are more than wrong? It

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Speaker 1: means the long arc of science bends towards the truth

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Speaker 1: but might never actually get there. It doesn't sound like

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Speaker 1: a band at all. That's where like the straight line

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Speaker 1: towards wrongness or least wrongness. No, it's a random walk

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Speaker 1: through late nights and lots of frustration in coffee. Right. Well,

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Speaker 1: have you ever thought of just blowing it all up

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Speaker 1: and starting from scratch? Oh? Yeah, every day? That's the dream.

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Speaker 1: But if only I had the right idea. It's never

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Speaker 1: too late to change careers. Maybe you can be in

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Speaker 1: one that's a little less least wrong. There's some joy

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Speaker 1: in being wrong? Are you right about that? Probably? Wrong?

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Speaker 1: I am more handmade cartoonist and the co author of

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Speaker 1: frequently asked Questions about the Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm

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Speaker 1: a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and

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Speaker 1: I'm an expert at being wrong. Oh yeah, how do

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Speaker 1: you know you're not wrong about being an expert about

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Speaker 1: being wrong? Well, I wrote a whole book about it

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Speaker 1: with you, So I guess that qualifies me not knowing

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Speaker 1: what's going on about the universe. Well, now, the book

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Speaker 1: was called we Have No Idea, None, We are wrong.

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Speaker 1: I think you're wrong about the title of the bontanil.

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Speaker 1: It means that all of our ideas about the universe

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Speaker 1: are almost certainly wrong, and the truth that's out there

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Speaker 1: is something that would shock us if we could only

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Speaker 1: know it and understand it. Well, I guess that's the

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Speaker 1: point of an idea. It's just an idea, right, It's

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Speaker 1: not really a law or truth until you prove it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And the process of science is iterative. Right. We start

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Speaker 1: with one idea, it works for a while, and we

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Speaker 1: find some flaws and we make it better. Sometimes that's

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Speaker 1: a gradual evolution of an idea to a better idea.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a revolution, like when we over it throw

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Speaker 1: the mechanistic universe for quantum mechanics. That's kind of a

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Speaker 1: philosophical question, right, if an idea is is right a

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Speaker 1: little bit of the time or for a while was

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Speaker 1: it wrong in retrospect? It's really an interesting question in philosophy.

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Speaker 1: What is something you have to satisfy in order to

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Speaker 1: be true? Newton's theory of gravity worked really, really well,

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Speaker 1: but is it true? It's hard to say that it

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Speaker 1: is because it's missing one of the basic ideas about

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Speaker 1: the universe, that space is a thing that bends and

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Speaker 1: curves and instead describes gravity in terms of this like

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Speaker 1: fictitious force that doesn't really exist, Right, but it's right,

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Speaker 1: and that it works for like n of the situations

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Speaker 1: here on Earth. Right, Yeah, it certainly does work for

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Speaker 1: lots of situations. But does it describe what's actually happening?

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Speaker 1: Or is it just a recipe that seems to work? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I guess also, like, how do you prove that

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Speaker 1: the theory is not right? Right? Like, isn't it hard

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Speaker 1: to prove a negative kind of thing? It is hard,

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Speaker 1: and it's even possible. We may come up with two

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Speaker 1: theories of the universe both of which work equally well,

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Speaker 1: but have different conceptual structures that tell us different stories

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Speaker 1: about what's going on out there in the universe. In

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Speaker 1: that scenario, what do we do which one is true?

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Speaker 1: They can't both be true if they disagree about what's happening,

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Speaker 1: and yet they both work. So that's a future crisis

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Speaker 1: for philosophy. Yeah, that's just what the universe needs, a

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Speaker 1: two party system for us to devolve into political mess

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Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain

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Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of My Heart Radio in which

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Speaker 1: we try to tease apart the mess that is the universe,

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Speaker 1: this glorious, beautiful, incredibly wonderful mess that we find ourselves

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Speaker 1: in and that we puzzle over, and then we try

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Speaker 1: to pull apart so that we can have some understanding

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Speaker 1: of it. It seems to us to be incredible that

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Speaker 1: it's possible to translate the workings of the universe into

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Speaker 1: mathematical models in our minds. But somehow we have made

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Speaker 1: some progress. We don't think that the answers we have

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Speaker 1: are correct. In fact, we're pretty sure they're all somewhat wrong,

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Speaker 1: but we're enjoying making progress, and we love talking about

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Speaker 1: it with you. That's right, because it is an amazing universe.

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Speaker 1: And what better thing to be gloriously wrong about than

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Speaker 1: the entire universe and trying to understand it. Hey, if

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Speaker 1: you're gonna go wrong, go big, that's right, go a

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Speaker 1: thousand percent wrong, or maybe infinity wrong. Yeah, and don't

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Speaker 1: be wrong about tiny little things like you know, when

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Speaker 1: you were supposed to pick up the dry cleaning. Be

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Speaker 1: wrong about the fundamental nature of reality, man, Yeah, because um,

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Speaker 1: I guess nobody can disprove you that you're right about

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Speaker 1: being wrong. But joking aside. Science is a process, right,

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Speaker 1: We're continually refining our theories. Sometimes we throw them out

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Speaker 1: the window and start again from scratch, because the goal

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Speaker 1: is not to prove this theory or that theory. We

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Speaker 1: don't have a vested interest in one particular idea. The

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Speaker 1: goal is to come up with a theory that describes

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Speaker 1: the universe as best as possible, and sometimes that does

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Speaker 1: mean throwing out something we've been working on for decades

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Speaker 1: or hundreds of years. Yeah, because I think you know,

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Speaker 1: science kind of has this image of being pretty much

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Speaker 1: settled in the general public. New people think, oh, scientists

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Speaker 1: got it. These theories about the origin of the universe

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Speaker 1: and how big it is, and whether it's flat or

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Speaker 1: curve and things like that. But actually these things are

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Speaker 1: still being debated. In any day now, there could be

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Speaker 1: a result from one of our experiments or one of

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Speaker 1: our observations that totally disproves everything we thought was right.

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Speaker 1: That's right, there are deep questions about the universe. At

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Speaker 1: the smallest scale, what is everything made out of and

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Speaker 1: how's it all come together to make our reality? And

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Speaker 1: at the biggest scale, what is out there? How big

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Speaker 1: is the universe? How did it all start? And especially

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Speaker 1: at the biggest scale of questions about the universe, We've

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Speaker 1: had a series of incredible surprises over the last few decades.

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Speaker 1: As we look further out into the universe and build

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Speaker 1: new eyeballs to see even deeper back into the history

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Speaker 1: of our cosmos, we discover things that shock us as

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Speaker 1: the process, that really do upend our understanding of where

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Speaker 1: we live. Yeah, And in fact, just recently there was

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Speaker 1: a big headline that seemed to say that everything we

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Speaker 1: thought about the origin of the whole universe is maybe wrong.

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Speaker 1: And so, Daniel, you got an avalanche of comments from

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Speaker 1: listeners asking us to talk about this. That's right. There

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Speaker 1: was an article that whizzed around on social media claiming

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Speaker 1: that maybe the Big Bang didn't happen, that maybe the

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Speaker 1: latest data from our fanciest, newest eyeball, the James web

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Speaker 1: Space telescope, might be disproving the Big Bang. So lots

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Speaker 1: of listeners wrote to me on Twitter, and on email,

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Speaker 1: and on Discord and on every possible channel. I think

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Speaker 1: I even got some skywriting asking if this was for real?

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Speaker 1: Did anyone send you like actual mail. I don't check

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Speaker 1: my department mail very often, like once every few months

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Speaker 1: or so. There could be a whole avalanche of comments

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Speaker 1: there for waiting for you go check it in a minute.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, this was an article that seemed to have

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Speaker 1: everyone a buzz about whether or not we are right

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Speaker 1: about something as fundamental as the beginning of the universe.

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Speaker 1: And so today on the podcast, we'll be asking the

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Speaker 1: question did the James web Space telescope disprove the Big

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Speaker 1: Bang theory? I mean, did it explode the Big Bang?

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Speaker 1: Isn't that sort of an oxymoron? How can you blow

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Speaker 1: up a big bang? Right? Can you make it bang

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Speaker 1: year or bigger or bigger bang? Hear. Yeah, you would

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Speaker 1: think that it's already banged, But I guess you can

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Speaker 1: blow up the explosion too. You think that the origin

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Speaker 1: the universe would be the biggest bang there could be,

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Speaker 1: but still there is something to explode, the humongous bang.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it just needs to be upgraded the theory the bigger.

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Speaker 1: I guess you could should go both ways. You could

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Speaker 1: have a smaller bang and the even bigger bang. So

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Speaker 1: this article that seemed to cause all this stirring social

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Speaker 1: media and on the Internet as kind of a funny title.

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Speaker 1: That's right. The title of the article is the Big

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Speaker 1: Bang didn't happen, So that's some nice clickbait for you.

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Speaker 1: And the article goes into detail about what the James

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Speaker 1: web Space Telescope has seen and why it might cause

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Speaker 1: doubt on theories that describe the very very early universe.

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Speaker 1: But the article is not exactly like very strong scientific arguments.

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Speaker 1: For example, it references a reasoned paper by a cosmologist.

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Speaker 1: The title of that paper is Panic at the Discs,

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Speaker 1: which has to do with seeing very very distant galaxies.

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Speaker 1: This article refers to that as cosmologists are panicking about

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Speaker 1: what they are seeing in the universe. When really, Panic

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Speaker 1: at the discs is actually just a reference to like

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Speaker 1: a two thousands email band called Panic at the Disco.

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Speaker 1: So it's just a case of astronomers making bad jokes,

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Speaker 1: not actual crisis in the field. Wait, so let me

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Speaker 1: get this straight. Um. So the article that went viral

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Speaker 1: is an article about a research paper. It's an article

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Speaker 1: about some data that came from James web Space telescope,

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Speaker 1: and it references this research paper as evidence that cosmologists

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Speaker 1: are panicking because the research article you put the word

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Speaker 1: panic in its title. But it was just as a joke.

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Speaker 1: It's just as a joke and a reference to this

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Speaker 1: astronomer's favorite band, Panic at the Disco. So they saw

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Speaker 1: an opportunity for a bad pun, and you know, they

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Speaker 1: took it. And I gotta respect that because we do

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Speaker 1: that all the time. But in this case it led

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Speaker 1: to a bit of a misunderstanding. Oh I see, but

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Speaker 1: you know we're not publishing a research paper here, So

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Speaker 1: why would you make a joke in a research paper.

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Speaker 1: It might cost some panic, you know, like primely it did.

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Speaker 1: It's sort of the trend these days to try to

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Speaker 1: come up with witty research papers. I wrote an astrophysics

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Speaker 1: paper ones whose title was two lines or not two lines?

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Speaker 1: That is the question. So you know people make jokes

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Speaker 1: sometimes in research papers. All right, so this is all

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Speaker 1: kind of all goes back to a research paper that

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Speaker 1: and that use the work panic in the title. But

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Speaker 1: they didn't really mean to convey panic, but it did

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Speaker 1: sort of maybe mean to convey something wrong, right, that

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Speaker 1: something was off. That's right. There is something really interesting

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Speaker 1: and weird and fascinating about the data from the James

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Speaker 1: web Space telescope. There really is something to dig into there,

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Speaker 1: and it does raise some questions about the Big Bang. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I see. I think what you're saying is that there

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Speaker 1: is reason to panic, but it's just a normal amount

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Speaker 1: of panic that is involved in science. I don't think

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Speaker 1: anybody is actually panicking. People are licking their lips. This

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Speaker 1: is exciting, This is what we want. You know, people

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Speaker 1: aren't worried when we're about to overthrow a theory. They're

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Speaker 1: excited because overthrowing a theory is like the biggest party

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Speaker 1: in physics. When we can prove that something we always

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Speaker 1: thought was true is wrong. That's the moment of discovery.

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Speaker 1: When we were revealing something else, even truer about the universe,

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Speaker 1: something less wrong about our theories. So this idea that

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Speaker 1: like physicists would be worried about a theory being overthrown,

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Speaker 1: business would love it. Well, come on, I'm sure most

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Speaker 1: physicists would love it, except the one that came up

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Speaker 1: with the original theory that's being proven wrong. I'm sure

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Speaker 1: that that physicist not feeling a lot of zen right now. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I don't know how Newton would have felt if he

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Speaker 1: was in the seminar room when Einstein presented general activity.

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Speaker 1: Probably not good. I think Newton was also famously not

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Speaker 1: a very humble dude, and so probably he would have

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Speaker 1: asked a very sharp question. Everyone has big egos, even physicists. Right,

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Speaker 1: that's true. But there are plenty of people out there

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Speaker 1: who are looking to overthrow the establishment. So don't get

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Speaker 1: the impression that like physics is desperately defending one idea.

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Speaker 1: You know, we're out there trying to find the truth,

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Speaker 1: or trying to find cracks in our current ideas which

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Speaker 1: will lead us to the deeper truth. That's right. Imagine

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Speaker 1: a whole bunch of nerds and they're all trying to

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Speaker 1: be right. Yeah, that's the picture of size you should

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Speaker 1: have in your head. Everyone's trying to one up each other. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: everyone's happy to put down the other one. Yeah. It's

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Speaker 1: impossible to imagine a conspiracy of censorship keeping out the truth.

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Speaker 1: It just can't happen. Yeah, you can't. You can't get

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Speaker 1: a hundred nerds degree on anything except except that the

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Speaker 1: other person might be wrong. All right, Well, let's dig

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Speaker 1: into this because this article did cause a lot of ripples,

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Speaker 1: it seems, and a lot of people are concerned maybe

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Speaker 1: that the Big Bang theory is not quite right. So

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Speaker 1: let's start with the basics. What is the Big Bang theory?

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Speaker 1: This is a good opportunity to actually to clear up

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Speaker 1: some misconceptions about what the Big Bang is. I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of people when they hear big Bang, they

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Speaker 1: imagine a tiny dot of dense matter in empty space

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Speaker 1: which then blows up and that stuff flies out through

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Speaker 1: the universe, filling that empty space with stuff, and that

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Speaker 1: the Big Bang happened like in one location at one time,

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Speaker 1: and things have been flying out from that dot ever since.

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Speaker 1: That's probably what people mostly have in their heads when

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Speaker 1: they think about Big Bang. But when we talk about

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Speaker 1: the Big Bang scientifically, we actually have something very different

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Speaker 1: in mind. It's different in a few important ways. The first,

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Speaker 1: and maybe a harness to wrap your mind around, is

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Speaker 1: that we think the Big Bang didn't happen in one spot.

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Speaker 1: We think it probably happened everywhere. That the universe was

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Speaker 1: filled with this very hot, very dense matter and that

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Speaker 1: expanded and cooled and the universe became dilute. But that

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Speaker 1: this happened all through the universe, not just at one point. Well,

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Speaker 1: that sort of depends on what you assume is the

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Speaker 1: size of the universe, Right, Like, if you assume that

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Speaker 1: the universe is infinite, then yet it was like sort

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Speaker 1: of like a dot everywhere all at once. But if

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Speaker 1: it had a sort of a finite volume, and it

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Speaker 1: really kind of was kind of a smaller dot. Right,

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Speaker 1: If the universe is finite but doesn't have any edges,

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Speaker 1: if it loops over around itself, then the Big Bang

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Speaker 1: would still happen everywhere in that finite universe. At the

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Speaker 1: same time, you're right that we don't know whether the

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Speaker 1: universe is finite or infinite. But the sense we have

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Speaker 1: is that no place in the universe is special. The

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Speaker 1: laws of physics are the same everywhere, so there no

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Speaker 1: reason for the Big Bang to happen here or there

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Speaker 1: or around the corner. It should happen everywhere at once,

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Speaker 1: and what we see out there in the universe is

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Speaker 1: consistent with that, with there being no center. The expansion,

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Speaker 1: for example, is happening everywhere at the same time, right.

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Speaker 1: I think maybe what you're trying to say is that

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Speaker 1: maybe most people think of the Big Bang as like

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Speaker 1: this thing, like the universe kind of exploding, but really

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Speaker 1: it's more like before the Big Bang, the universe was

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Speaker 1: just there was just a lot less space, and so

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Speaker 1: everything was crammed into a smaller space. And then after

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Speaker 1: the Big Bang there was just a whole lot more space,

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Speaker 1: and so everything was more spread out, and the part

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Speaker 1: of the universe that we can see, the observable universe,

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Speaker 1: was much much smaller. We don't know what's beyond that.

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Speaker 1: It might be that the universe is infinite and it

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Speaker 1: expanded from something infinite to something more infinite. It might

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Speaker 1: be that the universe's finite. We can only see a

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Speaker 1: part of it, and the part of it that we

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Speaker 1: can see now was much much smaller before this expansion,

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Speaker 1: not like a tiny dot or an atom, but something

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Speaker 1: much much smaller before the expansion. Right, we can look

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Speaker 1: at the universe, we see that this expansion happened. We

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Speaker 1: can dial it backwards to a much denser, earlier stage.

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Speaker 1: But we don't think it happened in just one location.

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Speaker 1: We think it probably happened everywhere. The other important details

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Speaker 1: to sort through about the Big Bang is exactly what

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Speaker 1: we mean by time equal zero, Like, when did the

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Speaker 1: Big Bang happen? A lot of people probably imagine that

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Speaker 1: we start with a gravitational singularity, a point of infinite

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Speaker 1: density from which everything started, and that's T equal zero,

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Speaker 1: that's the first moment. But really the Big Bang theory

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Speaker 1: doesn't go back that far, goes back to a very hot,

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Speaker 1: very early, very dense state, but not infinitely dense. We

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Speaker 1: don't know how to describe something that's infinitely dense. We

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Speaker 1: think that's actually like a failure of general relativity. We

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Speaker 1: think that our theories of the universe work up to

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Speaker 1: a certain temperature, a certain sort of density of the universe.

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Speaker 1: Beyond that, we just don't know what to do. So

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Speaker 1: when we say T equal zero, when we say the

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Speaker 1: Big Bang, we really just mean we start from a

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Speaker 1: very hot, very dense state, not actually infinite. We can

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Speaker 1: use general relativity to try to extrapolate further back to

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Speaker 1: maybe infinite density a singularity, but we think that's probably wrong.

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Speaker 1: We don't think that general relative it is applicable at

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Speaker 1: those stages. Right, But I think you still put TI

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Speaker 1: equal zero at the point where the universe would be

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Speaker 1: infinite kind of right. The theory just doesn't claim to

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Speaker 1: know what actually happens in that infinity, you know, the

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Speaker 1: Big Bang theory. We put equal zero at the point

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Speaker 1: when the universe is at the Plank temperature, this highest

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Speaker 1: temperature that we can imagine beyond which we don't think

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Speaker 1: our theories are valid. That's what T equal zero is,

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Speaker 1: is this early, very dense universe, not at the singularity,

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Speaker 1: because we don't even know if there was a singularity

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Speaker 1: or something else or a bounce or whatever. Extrapolate back

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Speaker 1: as far as we can, which is up to the

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Speaker 1: Plank temperature, and that's what we say T equal zero is,

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Speaker 1: and we can model our universe from that point forward.

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Speaker 1: We don't know how to go any further back from that.

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Speaker 1: Before that is maybe something else like an infloton field

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Speaker 1: that decayed into that state. Huge question mark. Lots of speculation.

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Speaker 1: But TI equal zero. The actual Big Bang doesn't start

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Speaker 1: from that singularity. It starts from the hottest, densest state

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Speaker 1: that our physics can currently describe. Okay, I see what

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Speaker 1: you're saying. You're saying the Big Bang theory does actually

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Speaker 1: start at the beginning you just said to equal zero,

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Speaker 1: like a few moments, or at least it starts like

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Speaker 1: you're starting the movie a few minutes into the action. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we don't know how far into the action. We don't

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Speaker 1: even know what time means. In that state? Are laws

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Speaker 1: of physics breakdown there? You know? And that's because we

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Speaker 1: think the laws of physics that we have are applicable

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Speaker 1: in certain regimes the way like fluid mechanics. It works

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Speaker 1: for water flow, right, it doesn't really work for gas.

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Speaker 1: If you heat the water up too much. Your laws

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Speaker 1: of fluids are sort of useless. We think that the

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Speaker 1: laws that we have are kind of like that, they

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Speaker 1: are applicable in a certain temperature range of the universe.

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Speaker 1: Beyond that they're basically useless because we don't have the

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Speaker 1: true fundamental theory. But we say T equals zero sort

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Speaker 1: of like the earliest point that we can describe. We

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Speaker 1: think maybe there was something before that, big question marks

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Speaker 1: about what that might have been. Well, almost certainly there

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Speaker 1: were things before then, right the tegual zeros the stuff

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Speaker 1: that was there equals equals zero must have come from somewhere,

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Speaker 1: must have come from somewhere. But you know, the spectrum

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Speaker 1: of ideas is really wide. It's like maybe the universe

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Speaker 1: was filled with this other kind of field, an insulton field,

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Speaker 1: which is then decayed. Or maybe space didn't even exist

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Speaker 1: before that. Right, Maybe space itself is emergent. It comes

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Speaker 1: together from quantum bits weaving themselves together with entanglement to

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Speaker 1: form this fabric that we call space. And before that,

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Speaker 1: the universe as we know and describe it with our

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Speaker 1: laws didn't even really exist in the same sense the

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Speaker 1: way that like a fluid doesn't exist once it turns

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Speaker 1: into a gas. Or maybe even time also was emergent.

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Speaker 1: So there's a huge range of possible ideas for what

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Speaker 1: happens sort of before T equal zero. Right, And I

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Speaker 1: guess I'd ranged me to my question, which is like,

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Speaker 1: is there actually just one Big Bang theory or is

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Speaker 1: it kind of like a general family of ideas or

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Speaker 1: one idea that's incomplete? But there are many different possibilities

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Speaker 1: about it, you know what I mean, Like is it

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Speaker 1: one established theory or is it just kind of like

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Speaker 1: a general idea, great questions. So before to equal zero,

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Speaker 1: there's like a wild West of theories, like a huge

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Speaker 1: number of crazy ideas, some of which are super fun

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Speaker 1: to talk about it. We explore them in some episodes.

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Speaker 1: After T equal zero, there's a pretty solid idea of

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Speaker 1: describing that expansion and understanding how it shaped the universe

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Speaker 1: that we see today, and that's really very rigorous. We

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Speaker 1: have measurements, we have observations, We have theories with very

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Speaker 1: precise predictions about for example, like how much helium was

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Speaker 1: produced in the first minute of the Big Bang and

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Speaker 1: how much lithium was produced and all this stuff which

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Speaker 1: we can actually measure and check. So after T equal

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Speaker 1: zero and we think like our laws are enforced, there

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Speaker 1: really is a fairly well established idea for what happened.

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Speaker 1: I mean, still some uncertainty, still some question marks, but

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Speaker 1: it really hangs together very nicely. That is until maybe

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Speaker 1: this latest set of data from the James web Space Telscope,

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Speaker 1: which some people might argue throws the whole theory into

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Speaker 1: disarrayan maybe even disproves it. So let's get into what

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Speaker 1: this data is and whether or not it really does

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Speaker 1: disprove the Big Bang theory. But first let's take a

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Speaker 1: quick break. All right, we are disproving the Big Bang

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Speaker 1: theory here today, right, Daniel. That's we're aiming big here.

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Speaker 1: We're blowing it all up. Yep, we're going. We're going

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Speaker 1: for the biggest bank possible. We are having a crazy

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Speaker 1: sale come by a galaxy. It's a thousand percent off.

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Speaker 1: What what would you do with the gals? I don't know,

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Speaker 1: but real estate is the best investment. That's what everybody's

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Speaker 1: telling me. All right, well, um, so we have a

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Speaker 1: theory of the Big Bang, or at least a general

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Speaker 1: model of what happened at the beginning of the universe,

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Speaker 1: at least starting from a certain point in time. But

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Speaker 1: now there's some data from the James Web telescope which

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Speaker 1: some people are maybe interpreting as disproving the Big Bang.

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Speaker 1: What's going on here exactly? And so one of the

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Speaker 1: key predictions of the Big Bang theory, when we start,

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Speaker 1: as we say, from t qual zero, we model the

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Speaker 1: universe getting less and less hot and more and more

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Speaker 1: spread out. One of the key predictions is exactly how

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Speaker 1: the universe came to look the way that it does,

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Speaker 1: which means that things cool old and gas formed and

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Speaker 1: stars formed and galaxies formed. And we have a model

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Speaker 1: for how we think that happens. There's this dark ages

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Speaker 1: before there are any stars, and then the stars collapse

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Speaker 1: and start to burn and they come together gradually to

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Speaker 1: form galaxies. We have this sort of like bottom up

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Speaker 1: theory of formation of galaxies. So galaxies should start out

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Speaker 1: very small, very dim, sort of like many galaxies merging

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Speaker 1: together to make the big galaxies that we see today.

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Speaker 1: And this is exactly what James Webb can do. James

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Speaker 1: Webb can look into the very very early part of

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Speaker 1: the universe and watch those galaxies form and check our

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Speaker 1: understanding of how those galaxies came together. Right, because the

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Speaker 1: James Webb Space Telescope is it's a specialty is looking

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Speaker 1: in the infrared and also looking really far away and

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Speaker 1: both of those things that you kind of see backwards

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Speaker 1: in time, right, Like, the further out do you see

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Speaker 1: in the universe, the older the things are, because um,

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Speaker 1: it just took that much longer to get to you.

430
00:21:57,440 --> 00:21:59,440
Speaker 1: So the light we're getting from them now is really

431
00:21:59,440 --> 00:22:02,080
Speaker 1: old or was made a long time ago, Yes, both

432
00:22:02,080 --> 00:22:03,960
Speaker 1: of those things. You want to see things that happened

433
00:22:03,960 --> 00:22:05,879
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of the universe. You have to

434
00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:09,119
Speaker 1: find old light, light that's been coming to you since

435
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:12,240
Speaker 1: that time, and those photons screamed down into the universe

436
00:22:12,280 --> 00:22:14,480
Speaker 1: and have now just arrived at our instruments. And the

437
00:22:14,560 --> 00:22:17,439
Speaker 1: James Web Space Telescope, as you say, can see the infrared,

438
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:21,119
Speaker 1: which means it sees the lowest energy photons, photons that

439
00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:24,200
Speaker 1: are well below what we can see. It's sort of

440
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:26,320
Speaker 1: a cool science fact. We look at these James Webb

441
00:22:26,359 --> 00:22:29,480
Speaker 1: telescope pictures. That's not what you would see if your

442
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:32,120
Speaker 1: head was out there in space pointing in the same direction.

443
00:22:32,240 --> 00:22:34,040
Speaker 1: In fact, if all you could see with the photons

444
00:22:34,040 --> 00:22:36,720
Speaker 1: that hit the James Webb telescope, you would see blackness.

445
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:39,240
Speaker 1: You would see nothing. Right, The images that you see

446
00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:42,880
Speaker 1: are actually false color, they're shifted. The wavelengths are not

447
00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:45,400
Speaker 1: the ones that the James Web saw. James Webb saw

448
00:22:45,400 --> 00:22:47,600
Speaker 1: them lower and the sort of moved up into the

449
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:50,960
Speaker 1: visual frequencies so that you can see them. Right. And

450
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:53,399
Speaker 1: so looking at this light, let's you see things that

451
00:22:53,440 --> 00:22:56,840
Speaker 1: were really old, maybe even like towards the beginning of

452
00:22:56,840 --> 00:22:58,960
Speaker 1: the universe. What's like, what's the oldest thing that the

453
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:02,280
Speaker 1: James Webbs that lescope can see. Well, it's really exciting. Actually,

454
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:04,400
Speaker 1: in the first few days people started looking at these

455
00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:07,119
Speaker 1: pictures and spotting things that are old, and then older,

456
00:23:07,240 --> 00:23:10,080
Speaker 1: and then even older and then oldiest. It was amazing,

457
00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:12,800
Speaker 1: like every day their record was broken. They just kept

458
00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:15,359
Speaker 1: knocking down the barrier seeing things that were in the

459
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:18,000
Speaker 1: very early universe. As far as I can tell, the

460
00:23:18,040 --> 00:23:21,000
Speaker 1: record right now is seeing things that formed a hundred

461
00:23:21,040 --> 00:23:24,119
Speaker 1: and eighty million years after the Big Bang, So you know,

462
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:26,760
Speaker 1: it took about four hundred thousand years for the universe

463
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:29,480
Speaker 1: to cool to the point where we had neutral hydrogen,

464
00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:32,560
Speaker 1: and then it took a long time for things to coalesce,

465
00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:35,640
Speaker 1: to form stars and to form galaxies. You know, we're

466
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:38,560
Speaker 1: talking hundreds of millions of years, but we didn't really know.

467
00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:41,479
Speaker 1: We've never seen that far back in time. But now

468
00:23:41,520 --> 00:23:44,600
Speaker 1: that James Webb telescope can see those, you know, specifically,

469
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:46,720
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we can see further back in

470
00:23:46,800 --> 00:23:49,399
Speaker 1: time with James Webb than we can with Hubble is

471
00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:51,959
Speaker 1: not just because it's bigger, not just because we can

472
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:54,639
Speaker 1: see dimmer things because it can gather more light with

473
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 1: its larger mirrors, but also specifically because it sees these

474
00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:02,119
Speaker 1: low energy photons. As they've been flying through space for

475
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:05,520
Speaker 1: billions of years, their wavelength has been stretched by the

476
00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:08,240
Speaker 1: expansion of the universe. So things that started out in

477
00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:11,240
Speaker 1: the visual spectrum when they left their galaxies billions of

478
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:13,960
Speaker 1: years ago are now in the infrared, and we need

479
00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:16,680
Speaker 1: this special technology to see them. You couldn't see these

480
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:19,239
Speaker 1: galaxies with the hubble. Now when you say that we

481
00:24:19,320 --> 00:24:21,720
Speaker 1: see things that have been a hundred and eighty million

482
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:24,440
Speaker 1: years after the Big Bang, do you mean like actual

483
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:26,640
Speaker 1: things like we can see stars at that time where

484
00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:28,760
Speaker 1: their stars at that time? Or are we seeing things

485
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: like the background microwave radiation. We are seeing early galaxies,

486
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:36,600
Speaker 1: so we can't resolve individual stars. These things are very far,

487
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:39,920
Speaker 1: very faint. James Webb itself can even just barely pick

488
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:43,080
Speaker 1: out that they exist. We see these smudges that we

489
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:47,239
Speaker 1: think our galaxies, meaning you know, many many stars. So

490
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:49,840
Speaker 1: what we're seeing our real objects we can't resolve, you know,

491
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 1: like stars with planets around them, But we can tell

492
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: that there are galaxies out there in the very early universe,

493
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what we're trying to understand. How quickly

494
00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 1: did these galaxies form, how big we're today, how bright

495
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:03,679
Speaker 1: were they, and does that agree with our model for

496
00:25:03,760 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 1: how the universe evolved from a very hot, dense state

497
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:10,320
Speaker 1: to the cold, glitterally beautiful cosmos that we have today.

498
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:14,399
Speaker 1: What you're saying, they were actually galaxies already a hundred

499
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 1: and eighty million years after the Big Bang. That seems

500
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 1: like really soon. It seems like really soon. I mean

501
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:22,680
Speaker 1: it's eight million years, but you know, if you're talking

502
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:25,680
Speaker 1: about the universe, it's fourteen billion years old. It's it's

503
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:29,080
Speaker 1: like having purity in when y're one year year old. Yeah,

504
00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:31,159
Speaker 1: it didn't take that long for galaxies to form. And

505
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:34,159
Speaker 1: galaxies are actually really really old, Like the Earth is

506
00:25:34,160 --> 00:25:36,479
Speaker 1: only four and a half billion years old. Our Solar

507
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:39,359
Speaker 1: system didn't exist for the first nine billion years of

508
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:42,679
Speaker 1: the universe, but the Milky Way is much older. We

509
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:45,520
Speaker 1: think it's at least thirteen billion years old, and so

510
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:48,200
Speaker 1: the Milky Way has been around for almost the entire

511
00:25:48,320 --> 00:25:51,199
Speaker 1: time of the universe, even though our Solar system for

512
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:53,800
Speaker 1: more recently. And so this is one of the biggest

513
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:56,960
Speaker 1: questions that James Webb con probe is exactly how early

514
00:25:57,119 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: did galaxies form? Do we understand how they formed and

515
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 1: how they emerge and how they grew to be the

516
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:05,399
Speaker 1: glittering monsters that they are today? Right? And so the

517
00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 1: space telescope can see little smudges that we think are

518
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: that old that happened that the chind a hundred and

519
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:15,080
Speaker 1: eighty million years after the Big Bang. But then how

520
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:17,680
Speaker 1: do we know that little s mudge is that old?

521
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:19,199
Speaker 1: Like we just see as much, how do we know

522
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:22,119
Speaker 1: it's it's came from those early galaxies. So what we

523
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:24,359
Speaker 1: can do is we can measure how far away these

524
00:26:24,359 --> 00:26:27,200
Speaker 1: smudges are, and we can measure the distance from here

525
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 1: to there, and that tells us how long the light

526
00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:32,240
Speaker 1: has been going. And we measure the distance to these

527
00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:35,560
Speaker 1: galaxies by seeing how much the light has been red shifted.

528
00:26:35,680 --> 00:26:37,879
Speaker 1: We talked about this in the podcast recently. Measure the

529
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: distance to these far away objects by seeing how the

530
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 1: light from them has been shifted in frequency by their velocity.

531
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:47,720
Speaker 1: Because things that are further away from us are moving

532
00:26:47,760 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: away faster. So the further something is away from us,

533
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:52,840
Speaker 1: the faster it's moving away from us. And the more

534
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:55,880
Speaker 1: it's light is shifted in frequency. So if you can

535
00:26:55,960 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: measure the red shift of an object, you can tell

536
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 1: how fast it's moving away from us, and therefore you

537
00:27:01,119 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 1: can tell how far away it is, and therefore you

538
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,080
Speaker 1: can tell how old it is, right, Because I guess

539
00:27:06,119 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 1: you assume that when these early galaxies, when they emitted

540
00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 1: all this light, that it was light like regular light

541
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:15,919
Speaker 1: like the kind of our star emits, right, that's at

542
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 1: a certain frequency. And so if you see it shifted

543
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 1: in frequency, that means that something's going on. And what's

544
00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:23,840
Speaker 1: going on in here is that the universe is expanding, right,

545
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: which is thretching and moving those frequencies exactly. We answered

546
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:29,160
Speaker 1: this question on the pot recently. How can you tell

547
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 1: if light is red shifted? And you can't by looking

548
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: at an individual photon. You can't say, this photon used

549
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:36,240
Speaker 1: to have one frequency and now it has another, and

550
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:38,840
Speaker 1: I can tell, let's just arrive with a certain frequency.

551
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 1: But if you look at the distribution of frequencies from

552
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: a galaxy, you can tell that they've been shifted because

553
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 1: galaxies have a characteristic spectrum based on the atoms that

554
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:49,880
Speaker 1: are in them. Because atoms tend to glow at certain frequencies.

555
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 1: So you look at that fingerprint, you say, oh, this

556
00:27:52,119 --> 00:27:54,280
Speaker 1: fingerprint looks like it's shifted to the right by a

557
00:27:54,359 --> 00:27:57,359
Speaker 1: hundred animeters, And that's how you can tell how much

558
00:27:57,400 --> 00:27:59,359
Speaker 1: it's been red shifted. From that, you can figure out

559
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 1: the relative pity of it, and from that you can

560
00:28:01,560 --> 00:28:04,080
Speaker 1: figure out the distance and therefore the age. And so

561
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 1: the king right now is something with the red shift

562
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: of twenty which means that it's a hundred and eighty

563
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:13,639
Speaker 1: million years after the Big Bang, because I guess the

564
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:17,280
Speaker 1: more red shift, the more it's shifted from its original frequency,

565
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: the older it is, because you assume that if it's

566
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:23,440
Speaker 1: that red shifted, it must have been traveling through expanding

567
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 1: space for a long time, which then can it tells

568
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:29,240
Speaker 1: you that it's it's really old exactly. So people have

569
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:31,920
Speaker 1: been pouring through one of these deep field pictures from

570
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 1: James Webb. This is of Smacks O seven to three,

571
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: which is about five billion light years away, and James

572
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 1: Webb has spotted all sorts of tiny little galaxies in

573
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 1: the background of this. So astronomer has been pouring through

574
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 1: this picture looking at these things trying to figure out

575
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: what is the red shift and finding older and older

576
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 1: ones every day. It's been very exciting. Yeah, let's get

577
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: into what the James Webb Space Telescope actually saw that

578
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 1: might be disproving the Big Bang. You're saying that it's

579
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 1: seeing some galaxies that are at a certain distance or

580
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: is this like like super duper far away, like behind

581
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 1: what we're actually thinking or trying to see. So it's

582
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:09,960
Speaker 1: seeing really really old galaxies, which is great because we

583
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 1: want to understand what's happened in the early universe as

584
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 1: these galaxies were forming. The issue is, the surprise is

585
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:18,840
Speaker 1: that the galaxies we are seeing with James Webb they're

586
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:22,280
Speaker 1: sort of like too big and too bright. We expected

587
00:29:22,320 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 1: the galaxies would form gradually, that you'd have a blob

588
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 1: of stars, they would tract another blob of stars, you'd

589
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: have many galaxies combining to form larger and larger galaxies

590
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:34,320
Speaker 1: that if you look really far into the past, you

591
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 1: would expect to only see many galaxies that wouldn't be

592
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 1: very bright and that wouldn't be very big. But instead,

593
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:41,320
Speaker 1: what we're seeing when we look at these galaxies that

594
00:29:41,320 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 1: are really really far away and really far into the

595
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 1: early universe is that they're much bigger and brighter than

596
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:49,960
Speaker 1: we expected. I see. So wait, so first of all,

597
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: I guess where are these galaxies that they must be

598
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 1: at the edge of the observable universe, right, because that's

599
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 1: that would be where the oldest stuff is. Or is

600
00:29:56,800 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 1: it closer? Now? You're right there, very far away there

601
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 1: at the edge of the the rubble universe. There's a

602
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 1: little bit of trickery there also, because when we talk

603
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 1: about where they are, we mean where they are now,

604
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 1: not where they were when they emitted these photons. So

605
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:13,000
Speaker 1: these photons they emitted a long long time ago, they've

606
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:15,520
Speaker 1: been moving away from us ever since, so they are

607
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 1: now much further away than they were when they sent

608
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: us this light. Okay, I was confuised because I think

609
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: you mentioned some field that was closer than the edge

610
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 1: of the observable universe. Oh right, well, this Smacks field

611
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:29,480
Speaker 1: is about five billion light years away. That's what James

612
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 1: was focused on. But there's lots of other stuff you

613
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:33,880
Speaker 1: can see in the background, and so sort of behind

614
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 1: that you can see lots of other more distant galaxies

615
00:30:37,040 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: that are close to the edge of the observable universe.

616
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:42,239
Speaker 1: I see. So we're like picking apart the things we

617
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: see in the background of these images exactly, and astronomers

618
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:47,680
Speaker 1: are hunting for them, and like, oh, look, what is

619
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 1: this smudge is at a galaxy? Is that the new

620
00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 1: record holders that the oldest thing we've ever seen in

621
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 1: the universe. That's pretty exciting, right, right? How do you

622
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 1: know it's not just as much in the in your lenge.

623
00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful instrument, man and insulted. Now, these things

624
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: look like galaxies, right, They have a spectrum of light

625
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: that looks familiar, that looks like what we expect to

626
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:09,360
Speaker 1: see from galaxies, and so you can fit that spectrum.

627
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 1: You can say, well, this looks like a galaxy, but

628
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: it looks like at a certain distance. You can also

629
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 1: measure the magnitude of it, like how much light are

630
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: we getting? That tells you basically how bright is it,

631
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 1: how many stars are in that galaxy. You can also

632
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:23,280
Speaker 1: look at the details of the spectrum and try to

633
00:31:23,320 --> 00:31:26,080
Speaker 1: guess at the mass of the galaxy, because there's some

634
00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 1: connection between the brightness of the various frequencies and the

635
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 1: mass of a galaxy. And so what we're seeing our

636
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 1: galaxies that seem to be brighter than what we expected

637
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: and more massive than we expected. We didn't expect galaxies

638
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: to form this quickly in the universe. So when we

639
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:42,680
Speaker 1: say that James web Space telescope, is it blowing up

640
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 1: the Big Bang theory? We don't mean it's disproving Einstein

641
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: or it's talking about the singularity. We mean it's challenging

642
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:54,240
Speaker 1: how galaxies formed in the early universe because what we're

643
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:58,000
Speaker 1: seeing out there are bigger, brighter galaxies earlier than we expected.

644
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: I see. So we're looking at the acron of these

645
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:04,560
Speaker 1: pictures and we're seeing super duper like the oldest galaxies

646
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:06,959
Speaker 1: we've ever seen, and they're bigger than what we thought

647
00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:09,240
Speaker 1: they were they should be at that point in the universe.

648
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 1: Is that going to kind of what you're saying. Yeah,

649
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: Like you go to visit your brother and he's got

650
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:15,000
Speaker 1: kids and they're supposed to be one years old, but

651
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: they're already taller than you, and you're like, well, something's

652
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:21,360
Speaker 1: going on here, right, That would be a big bang.

653
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: There's so many jokes I could make there, but I'm

654
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 1: not going to because this is a family friendly show. Yeah,

655
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 1: let's keep it safe for work here, all right. Well,

656
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 1: I guess, first of all, how do we know how

657
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: bright these things are, And how do we know how

658
00:32:35,480 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: massive and that they're bigger than they should be, like

659
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 1: just from the size of this mudge or or what

660
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: we can tell about how bright they are just by

661
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:44,680
Speaker 1: counting how many photons arrived per second. Right, the more

662
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:47,480
Speaker 1: stars that there are there, the more photons we're going

663
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:49,960
Speaker 1: to get. So it's just like a crude way of measuring,

664
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 1: like how many stars are in the galaxy? Is how

665
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: right is it in the sky. That's the way to

666
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:56,960
Speaker 1: tell how many stars there are. We can also try

667
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 1: to estimate the overall mass of the galaxy by looking

668
00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 1: at the spectrum and seeing like, oh, how red is it?

669
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 1: How green is it? Are these ideas for how the

670
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:08,120
Speaker 1: spectrum of a galaxy looks as it gets more and

671
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 1: more massive. How does that change with the size? The

672
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:14,880
Speaker 1: change with the size because remember that bluer stars are

673
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 1: hotter stars and don't burn as long, and so some

674
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:20,640
Speaker 1: galaxies have more blue stars and some galaxies have more

675
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 1: red stars. And this depends on whether or not they're

676
00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:26,680
Speaker 1: still making stars and how old the stars are in them,

677
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:30,400
Speaker 1: and that depends on the mass of the galaxy, because remember,

678
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 1: making stars is not that easy. It depends a little

679
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 1: bit on having just the right conditions. You need big

680
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 1: blobs of cold gas to form together. So by looking

681
00:33:39,160 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 1: at like the different colors of light that come from

682
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 1: a galaxy, we can get a sense for whether it's

683
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: been recently making stars or not. And from that we

684
00:33:47,120 --> 00:33:49,400
Speaker 1: can get a sense for the mass of the galaxy.

685
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:52,360
Speaker 1: And if that sounds a little bit tenuous to you,

686
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:55,200
Speaker 1: you're right, it's not something we understand super duper well.

687
00:33:55,280 --> 00:33:58,280
Speaker 1: It's like a trend we've noticed among a bunch of

688
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 1: galaxies we've been studying, but it's not something we have

689
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 1: like a hard and fast rule for. I think what

690
00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: you're saying is that you can look at younger galaxies,

691
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 1: like galaxies that we can see they are closer to us,

692
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:10,279
Speaker 1: and you do see this trend of like, Okay, if

693
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:12,640
Speaker 1: it's this big and this massive and this bright, we

694
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 1: should be seeing this in the in the light specdroom.

695
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 1: And so you're saying that we're seeing this light spectrum

696
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 1: from the old old galaxies, and so we can sort

697
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:23,359
Speaker 1: of make guesses about how big and bright it is. Yeah,

698
00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:26,000
Speaker 1: and we see some weird stuff, like there's some galaxies

699
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:28,800
Speaker 1: out there in the very very early universe that seemed

700
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 1: to be already as massive as the Milky Way, Like,

701
00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:35,360
Speaker 1: how can you get such a huge galaxy so early

702
00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:38,160
Speaker 1: on in the history of the universe. And so that's

703
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:40,920
Speaker 1: really the puzzle is why are we seeing galaxies that

704
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:43,919
Speaker 1: are so far away and so big and so bright. See,

705
00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:47,320
Speaker 1: because I guess we had a guess about how galaxies

706
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:49,880
Speaker 1: should evolved with the history of the universe, and this

707
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 1: is kind of um not fitting that history. Yeah, we

708
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: have a model. We can simulate the universe from the

709
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 1: very beginning when we think our laws apply, and say,

710
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 1: start out with gas and how clumpy was it, And

711
00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: we can predict how clumpy it was because of the

712
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 1: distribution of dark matter and quantum fluctuations in it. And

713
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:09,680
Speaker 1: we can also check those assumptions. Right, this is not

714
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:12,399
Speaker 1: just a story we're telling. We can see the very

715
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:15,800
Speaker 1: very early universe in the cosmic microwave background radiation, this

716
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:18,880
Speaker 1: light that was admitted just before it became transparent. We

717
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:21,400
Speaker 1: can see those ripples from the very early universe in

718
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:24,520
Speaker 1: the CMB. So we're pretty sure we know how the

719
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 1: universe slashed around in the very early moments and how

720
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:30,840
Speaker 1: that led to the formation of structure. Vast pools of

721
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:34,280
Speaker 1: dark matter that pulled themselves together and then pulled in gas,

722
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 1: which then forms stars and galaxies. So we thought we

723
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 1: had a pretty good story, and you're right, that story

724
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,520
Speaker 1: predicts that we should not see really big galaxies very

725
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:46,160
Speaker 1: early on in the universe, or really bright galaxies really

726
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:49,000
Speaker 1: really far away. So it is a surprise to see

727
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:51,760
Speaker 1: these galaxies. Well, the theory didn't say that we shouldn't

728
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:54,359
Speaker 1: see them. It's just that they were rare or something. Right,

729
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: It's possible to get super duper massive galaxies very early on,

730
00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 1: but not this many, and you should take a longer

731
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 1: to find them. So we're seeing a lot of these

732
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:05,319
Speaker 1: giant old galaxies. Is that what you're saying. Yeah, we've

733
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:08,440
Speaker 1: only just started to look and we're already seeing giant, old,

734
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:10,799
Speaker 1: bright galaxies. So it's sort of like if you're looking

735
00:36:10,840 --> 00:36:12,879
Speaker 1: for four leaf clovers and you expect to find one

736
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:15,040
Speaker 1: in a football field and you look down and you

737
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: find ten under your feet, and you're thinking, something about

738
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:21,799
Speaker 1: my estimate is wrong, right, this seems very unlikely, right,

739
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:24,319
Speaker 1: Or maybe since they are bigger and brighter, you just

740
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:26,600
Speaker 1: see them more easily. Well, we definitely do see them

741
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 1: more easily. Than the dimmer ones, but they shouldn't even

742
00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:31,760
Speaker 1: be there. We just have the first scoop of data

743
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:35,160
Speaker 1: from James Webb, and already in this like little tiny

744
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:37,719
Speaker 1: patch of space we see many, many more of these

745
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 1: bright massive galaxies than we expect to see. So either

746
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:44,480
Speaker 1: it's a huge fluctuation, or there's something fuzzy about our measurements,

747
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: or there's something wrong about our understanding of the early

748
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 1: universe right, right, and also maybe about its composition, right,

749
00:36:51,239 --> 00:36:53,759
Speaker 1: because a lot of this theory are our story of

750
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:56,480
Speaker 1: what happened has to do with dark matter as well. Yeah,

751
00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 1: it's all tingled together, the dark matter and the photons

752
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:02,279
Speaker 1: and the normal matter slashed together in this motion the

753
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 1: very early universe. And we do think that we understand

754
00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 1: that part fairly well. I mean, we can measure things

755
00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 1: like sound waves moving through the early universe and the

756
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:14,880
Speaker 1: acoustic oscillations that it forms in the structure of galaxies

757
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: we see today, So that part feels pretty secure. So

758
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 1: this one really was a big surprise to see something

759
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 1: that sort of contradicts it all right, Well, we seem

760
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 1: to have actual data that maybe throw us our theories

761
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:29,799
Speaker 1: about what happened after the Big Bank or after the

762
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:32,360
Speaker 1: universe sort of grew up in evolved. And so what

763
00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 1: does it all mean. Is the Big Bang theory right

764
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 1: or is it off a little bit? Let's get into that,

765
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break. All right, we're

766
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 1: talking about the new data from James web Space telescope.

767
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:00,800
Speaker 1: Then maybe um sees old Gala sees that are bigger

768
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:04,160
Speaker 1: than they should be, which means that maybe our model

769
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:06,400
Speaker 1: of the Big Bang and what happened afterwards could be

770
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 1: a little bit off or a lot off. Daniel, is

771
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:11,239
Speaker 1: this a big deal or just like a tweak in

772
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: the parameters of the model. It's definitely a big deal.

773
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:17,319
Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun for cosmologists. It's exactly what

774
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 1: we were hoping to happen when we look deep into

775
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 1: the universe to see something surprising. It's exactly the kind

776
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:25,120
Speaker 1: of thing we see every time we do look in

777
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:27,040
Speaker 1: a new part of the universe. For the new eyeball

778
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:29,640
Speaker 1: is something that makes us scratch our heads and go huh.

779
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 1: And so it's very exciting and there's a lot of

780
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:35,319
Speaker 1: different ideas being floated out there for how to explain it.

781
00:38:35,600 --> 00:38:37,680
Speaker 1: First of all, there's a lot of caution, you know, like,

782
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:41,200
Speaker 1: are we sure about these measurements? I think probably the

783
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:45,760
Speaker 1: number one explanation that most cosmologists and astrophysicists are thinking

784
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:49,360
Speaker 1: about is how well we know the brightness and the

785
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:51,920
Speaker 1: size of these early galaxies, Because you know, these are

786
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: really dim smudges from very very faint things, very very

787
00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:59,680
Speaker 1: far away. How confident are we in these measurements of

788
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:03,240
Speaker 1: dis and age and size? Right? I wonder also of maybe,

789
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: like early galaxies or back then, things just emitted light differently.

790
00:39:08,160 --> 00:39:10,400
Speaker 1: Is that possible? Well, what we're talking about is emission

791
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:13,160
Speaker 1: of light from hydrogen and hydrogen is pretty basic stuff.

792
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:15,439
Speaker 1: We've studied it for a long time. We're pretty sure

793
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:18,879
Speaker 1: that hydrogen emitted light the same way a billion years

794
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:21,320
Speaker 1: ago and ten billion years ago as it does today.

795
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: Physics of hydrogen and light emission is pretty well understood.

796
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:28,080
Speaker 1: So unless like the very laws of physics are changing

797
00:39:28,080 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 1: with time, which would be awesome and cool, we're pretty

798
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,319
Speaker 1: sure that it emits light the same way. But there's

799
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:36,400
Speaker 1: an issue there, which is James Webb by itself, just

800
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: looking at these distant galaxies once is not great at

801
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 1: measuring these red shifts. It's a bit of a quick

802
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:43,879
Speaker 1: and dirty measurement, and so there could be a lot

803
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:46,800
Speaker 1: of uncertainty there. What do you mean, quick and dirty?

804
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:49,560
Speaker 1: How does it measure these spectrum of light? So the

805
00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:51,719
Speaker 1: way you'd like to do with the gold standard is

806
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:54,360
Speaker 1: to look at this galaxy in a lot of different

807
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,239
Speaker 1: wavelengths right all the way from the UV down to

808
00:39:57,280 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 1: the visible, down to the infrared down to the rate

809
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: you so you could see as many atomic lines as possible.

810
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 1: That would give you like a really precise measurement. You

811
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: see like fifty fingers from atoms, and you can see

812
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 1: them all slid over the same amount. That would give

813
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 1: you a lot of confidence. We haven't done that yet

814
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:15,680
Speaker 1: with these galaxies because we've only just discovered them. We

815
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:17,759
Speaker 1: didn't even know they were there. And so the next

816
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,279
Speaker 1: step is like point other telescopes at them that can

817
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:23,840
Speaker 1: see them in other frequencies, optical telescopes on the ground,

818
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 1: u V telescopes in space to get the full spectrum

819
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:29,239
Speaker 1: of these galaxies. We have right now is a really

820
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:31,960
Speaker 1: partial spectrum just from the James Webb, which you can

821
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:35,200
Speaker 1: only see in the infrared, and so it's got like

822
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 1: the very edge of the spectrum from which we can

823
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 1: get an estimate but there's a lot of uncertainty there

824
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:43,160
Speaker 1: can really just sort of only see the very tail

825
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum. You mean, like the measurement of

826
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 1: these freaking sees is kind of fuzzy. It's in itself. Yeah.

827
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 1: Also because these things are faint, right, so we don't

828
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:55,160
Speaker 1: have great data. You look at this data, it's not

829
00:40:55,239 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 1: like really crisp and beautiful. You can see the statistical

830
00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:01,440
Speaker 1: fluctuations because a limit it a number of photons that

831
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:03,840
Speaker 1: have made it this far. So there's just an inherent

832
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:08,319
Speaker 1: uncertainty in these red shift measurements. Nice, so maybe our

833
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:10,759
Speaker 1: estimate of how old they are is wrong, or maybe

834
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:13,040
Speaker 1: our estimate of how big they are or how bright

835
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 1: they are is wrong, so both Right now, we're just

836
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:18,279
Speaker 1: talking about how old they are, so specifically these red

837
00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:20,840
Speaker 1: shift measurements. That's sort of a quick and dirty approach.

838
00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:22,319
Speaker 1: What they're doing right now is just sort of looking

839
00:41:22,320 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 1: for the edge of the spectrum. A neutral hydrogen atoms

840
00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:29,359
Speaker 1: floating in space will absorb and emit radiation, but sort

841
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:32,680
Speaker 1: of like a maximum radiation that they will absorb and emit,

842
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:35,760
Speaker 1: and that corresponds to like an electron from the lowest

843
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:38,839
Speaker 1: level absorbing enough energy to be totally ionized to fly

844
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:41,400
Speaker 1: out into space, so it's sort of like a maximum

845
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: frequency there for hydrogen. And what they're doing is they're

846
00:41:44,160 --> 00:41:47,280
Speaker 1: looking at these galaxies and different frequencies and they're looking

847
00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 1: for that disappearance of looking for like the edge of

848
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:51,680
Speaker 1: the spectrum where it sort of falls off. So it's

849
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:54,400
Speaker 1: really just like one feature that they're looking at. If

850
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 1: you really want to precise measurement, you should have the

851
00:41:56,719 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 1: whole spectrum and see lots of different features. So it's

852
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 1: totally reasonable and it's exactly what they should be doing

853
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 1: with the first data. But there's also a lot of

854
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 1: uncertainty in these numbers. So it's one galaxy that we

855
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:10,759
Speaker 1: think of that red shift to twenty eight million years

856
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:13,279
Speaker 1: after the Big Bang, it could be different. It could

857
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: be that that's actually five hundred million years after the

858
00:42:15,719 --> 00:42:18,479
Speaker 1: Big Bang, So it might be that it's exactly where

859
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 1: we think it should be. It's just that we mismeasured

860
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:24,040
Speaker 1: at the age. I see. We don't have great resolution

861
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:26,560
Speaker 1: to measure these red ships, is what you're saying. We

862
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:29,719
Speaker 1: just have a first glimpse from James Webb, and what

863
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:31,799
Speaker 1: we need to do is either like focus James web

864
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:33,960
Speaker 1: on it for a while, so we get more data,

865
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:36,839
Speaker 1: we get crisper resolution, or look at it with other

866
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:39,799
Speaker 1: telescopes also in other frequencies, so we can get a

867
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:42,759
Speaker 1: bigger handle on it, a better fit for how much

868
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:45,919
Speaker 1: of the red shift there really is. Yeah, nobody likes

869
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,200
Speaker 1: it when photos make you look older than you really are.

870
00:42:49,160 --> 00:42:52,279
Speaker 1: That's always a bummer. It could be that these galaxies

871
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:55,799
Speaker 1: actually are maybe younger than what we initially think and

872
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: so and that everything is fine, but then the other

873
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:00,960
Speaker 1: possibilities and maybe are model are a little bit off.

874
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 1: There's also this question of the mass of the galaxies, right.

875
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:06,000
Speaker 1: We talked about how we look at these spectra and

876
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: we try to guess the mass based on how the

877
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:10,480
Speaker 1: different colors of light come in, and you know, there's

878
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: a lot of uncertainty there. Also, we're talking about comparing

879
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:16,439
Speaker 1: our galaxies to very early galaxies, and there's just sort

880
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:18,799
Speaker 1: of a lot of assumptions that go in and the

881
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 1: relationship between the spectrum of the mass that are not

882
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,680
Speaker 1: really very well understood. You know, for example, maybe one

883
00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:27,319
Speaker 1: of these galaxies has a black hole the center of it,

884
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:30,240
Speaker 1: and it has an active galactic nuclei like a quaisar

885
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 1: emitting a lot of light, so we think we're counting

886
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:35,239
Speaker 1: the brightness of the galaxy and using that to figure

887
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: out what the mass, But actually there's a huge quasar

888
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: in the middle that's changing our estimation of the brightness

889
00:43:41,160 --> 00:43:42,960
Speaker 1: and the whole spectrum and throwing the whole thing off.

890
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:46,239
Speaker 1: So there's also a lot of uncertainty in the mass measurements.

891
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 1: So I'd say overall, people are excited about this data

892
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 1: and it's interesting, but I'd say it's still too fuzzy

893
00:43:52,239 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 1: to draw any strong conclusions that it's really in contradiction

894
00:43:56,000 --> 00:43:59,440
Speaker 1: with our models of the early universe. Yeah, nobody likes

895
00:43:59,480 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 1: it when photo make you look more massive either, But

896
00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:05,960
Speaker 1: it's possible, right, it could be that this is the

897
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: first glimpse of something which really does pull the rug

898
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:11,799
Speaker 1: out of our idea for how structure formed in the

899
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:15,000
Speaker 1: early universe. And actually it wouldn't even be the first hint.

900
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:18,840
Speaker 1: We had another infrared telescope, the Spitzer, and the Spitzer

901
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:21,520
Speaker 1: also looked at really old galaxies. It wasn't as big

902
00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:23,880
Speaker 1: in this fancy it couldn't see as much light, and

903
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:26,440
Speaker 1: it wasn't as powerful as James Webb, but it also

904
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: saw some galaxies which seemed too massive, So this sort

905
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:32,760
Speaker 1: of aligns with what people were already seeing with another

906
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:35,960
Speaker 1: telescope m So James Webb is not the first one

907
00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 1: to sort of see this maybe old galaxies that are

908
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:40,840
Speaker 1: too big to be to fit our model. But what

909
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:42,720
Speaker 1: does it mean that it that are maybe our models

910
00:44:42,719 --> 00:44:45,280
Speaker 1: are wrong. Is it just that we're missing a piece

911
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 1: of it? Or maybe I mean, it's not going to

912
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:50,400
Speaker 1: throw the whole Big Bang theory out into the trash bin, right,

913
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:52,879
Speaker 1: It's probably just going to maybe tweak our models of

914
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:56,440
Speaker 1: what happened or after the Big Bang, or you know,

915
00:44:56,480 --> 00:44:59,879
Speaker 1: maybe what elements are there to determine how things evolved. Yeah,

916
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: not throwing the Big Bang away, because the Big Bang

917
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 1: is very successful predicting so many details. You know, the

918
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:09,239
Speaker 1: abundances of helium and hydrogen in the universe, and the

919
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:12,399
Speaker 1: cosmic web and the microwave background radiation. All that are

920
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 1: elements of the Big Bang which are very very solid.

921
00:45:15,040 --> 00:45:18,840
Speaker 1: We're talking about is tweaking something about how quickly structure

922
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:22,040
Speaker 1: formed and how quickly do you get clumps of stuff

923
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:25,680
Speaker 1: pulling it together forming galaxies. If these data are right

924
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:28,839
Speaker 1: and more precise measurements bear them out. Then it just

925
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:31,680
Speaker 1: means that there's something missing in that early structure formation.

926
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:33,440
Speaker 1: And you know, there are other hints that that might

927
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 1: be true. We've talked about early dark energy, these models

928
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 1: that the universe might have another component that accelerated its

929
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:44,440
Speaker 1: expansion and its structure formation early on in the universe.

930
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:46,799
Speaker 1: That changes our idea of like how old the whole

931
00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:50,760
Speaker 1: universe is. It could give like higher dark matter density

932
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 1: in the early universe, which pulled things together faster than

933
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:57,480
Speaker 1: we expected, and then we give galaxies forming more rapidly

934
00:45:57,520 --> 00:45:59,960
Speaker 1: than we expected. So it's sort of in that direct

935
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:02,120
Speaker 1: it it would be a tweak on the parameters, maybe

936
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 1: adding one more component, But we're definitely not throwing the

937
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 1: whole thing in the trash, right because I think we've

938
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 1: talked about this before, how things like dark energy and

939
00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: dark matter they're not necessarily constant throughout the history of

940
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:15,560
Speaker 1: the universe, right, Like there's the idea that maybe dark

941
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:18,759
Speaker 1: energy was faster or slower at some points earlier in

942
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,160
Speaker 1: our history. Yeah, this is this idea of early dark energy,

943
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: which is confusing because people don't think it's actually dark energy.

944
00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:28,399
Speaker 1: They think it's something else. Dark energy like which came

945
00:46:28,440 --> 00:46:30,840
Speaker 1: around in the very early universe and sort of changed

946
00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:33,799
Speaker 1: how things expanded and were shaped, and then fizzled out

947
00:46:34,120 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 1: after a few hundred million years, and so we don't

948
00:46:36,239 --> 00:46:38,319
Speaker 1: see it anymore. So it might just be that there's

949
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:40,600
Speaker 1: something else going on in the early universe that we

950
00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:43,480
Speaker 1: don't understand that affects how the whole thing evolved. And

951
00:46:43,520 --> 00:46:45,319
Speaker 1: we have clues about this because we look at the

952
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:48,040
Speaker 1: expansion of the universe as we see it today from

953
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:50,759
Speaker 1: like Type one A supernova, we see it expanding at

954
00:46:50,760 --> 00:46:52,560
Speaker 1: a certain rate, and then we look at the expansion

955
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:55,280
Speaker 1: of the universe very early on from the cosmic microwave

956
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: background radiation, and they don't really add up right. They

957
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:01,200
Speaker 1: tell two different stories about the bansion of the universe.

958
00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:03,560
Speaker 1: And so this discovery from James Webb might be pointing

959
00:47:03,600 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 1: in that same direction that the very early universe is

960
00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 1: a little bit different from what we expected. Not radically different.

961
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 1: It's not like it was all purple dinosaurs swimming through

962
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: space back then. We're not going to start from scratch.

963
00:47:14,640 --> 00:47:16,600
Speaker 1: But it might be that the details are wrong and

964
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:19,600
Speaker 1: need a little bit of tweaking. But that does sound

965
00:47:19,600 --> 00:47:23,439
Speaker 1: pretty fun. Purple dinosaurs swimming around when when you want

966
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:25,719
Speaker 1: to switch to that field, Danniel, I mean you're gonna

967
00:47:25,719 --> 00:47:28,399
Speaker 1: be wrong of the time. You might as well be

968
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 1: wrong of time with a wild and fun idea. Yeah, no,

969
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:36,360
Speaker 1: I'm not anti purple dinosaur. Absolutely a pro purple dinosaur

970
00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:39,040
Speaker 1: if it fits the data right, but currently we have

971
00:47:39,160 --> 00:47:42,680
Speaker 1: no evidence for purple space dinosaurs right. Well, I think

972
00:47:42,719 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: generally what you're saying is that you know, we're looking

973
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 1: at they basically baby pictures of the universe of galaxies

974
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:50,800
Speaker 1: in the universe, and they look a little trunkier and

975
00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 1: a little bigger than they should be. So it could

976
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:54,799
Speaker 1: be that our pictures are wrong, or it could be

977
00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:57,080
Speaker 1: that maybe you don't know what happened in between, Like

978
00:47:57,160 --> 00:47:59,799
Speaker 1: maybe these babies went on a diet and started working

979
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:02,200
Speaker 1: out on and so they lost a lot of weight

980
00:48:02,239 --> 00:48:04,239
Speaker 1: in between, and that's how they are the size they

981
00:48:04,239 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 1: are now. I'm so glad this is not a parenting

982
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:09,000
Speaker 1: podcast because boys so many red flags there. But yes,

983
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:12,319
Speaker 1: as an analogy, I think that describes it perfectly. These

984
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:14,759
Speaker 1: babies were really fat when they were born, and now

985
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:18,440
Speaker 1: they've gotten thinner, right, due to maybe changing dark energy

986
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:21,439
Speaker 1: or something like that, or some new baby diet fat

987
00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:25,880
Speaker 1: that was popular fourteen billion years ago, exactly, only eating

988
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:28,920
Speaker 1: smoothies made out of purple space dinosaurs for example. Oh

989
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:32,560
Speaker 1: my god, now now you're having the babies eat the dinosaurs. Boy,

990
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 1: that that is wrong in other levels, better than the

991
00:48:35,520 --> 00:48:37,680
Speaker 1: other direction, right, would you rather have the dinosaurs eat

992
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 1: the babies? I mean, I don't think we want to

993
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:42,560
Speaker 1: go there. It's wrong either way. Okay, so then it's

994
00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:46,200
Speaker 1: very scientific. But the lesson is that we're just learning

995
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:49,160
Speaker 1: about the early universe, and we have this fantastic new

996
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:52,399
Speaker 1: tool which is giving us incredible power to see those

997
00:48:52,440 --> 00:48:56,320
Speaker 1: early moments, to watch these galaxies form, and to compare

998
00:48:56,360 --> 00:48:58,719
Speaker 1: them to the ideas we've long had about how the

999
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:02,000
Speaker 1: universe forms, and maybe to update them and correct them.

1000
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:04,600
Speaker 1: And this is just the very first blush of data

1001
00:49:04,680 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: from the telescope. So it tells you that we're heralding

1002
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: in a completely new era of astronomy and cosmology with

1003
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:16,200
Speaker 1: this new incredible eyeball. Yeah, these incredible um chob baby pictures.

1004
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:18,239
Speaker 1: I think the lesson is that, you know, we have

1005
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:20,400
Speaker 1: these theories about the universe, but they kind of have

1006
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:22,719
Speaker 1: to fit the data, right, They had to fit what

1007
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:25,200
Speaker 1: we see today, and they also have to fit what

1008
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:28,920
Speaker 1: we see in the past through these powerful telescopes exactly.

1009
00:49:28,960 --> 00:49:31,560
Speaker 1: And contrary to what people read in that article, there's

1010
00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:35,120
Speaker 1: still a huge amount of data supporting our idea roughly

1011
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:37,640
Speaker 1: for the early universe and how are the structure of

1012
00:49:37,680 --> 00:49:40,840
Speaker 1: the universe we see today was created through those processes.

1013
00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:43,600
Speaker 1: We're not tossing that all out, but we might need

1014
00:49:43,640 --> 00:49:46,359
Speaker 1: to update it. Right, It's not a panic. It's more

1015
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:51,719
Speaker 1: like a whoop. It's more like, oh, this is exciting. Well,

1016
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:54,279
Speaker 1: not for the people who polished the original papers. They're

1017
00:49:54,320 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 1: just gonna get more citations. You get citations if you're

1018
00:49:56,560 --> 00:50:03,399
Speaker 1: right or if you're wrong. That seems like a right there. Well,

1019
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:05,840
Speaker 1: all of humanity is winning because we're all just learning

1020
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:10,439
Speaker 1: more about the universe. Yeah, or at least learning that

1021
00:50:10,520 --> 00:50:14,440
Speaker 1: we're least less least wrong. Maybe little by little we're

1022
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:16,919
Speaker 1: least year at least year wrong every year. Well, stay

1023
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:19,759
Speaker 1: tuned as we get more resolution on these pictures from

1024
00:50:19,760 --> 00:50:23,279
Speaker 1: the James Webb telescope and more confirmation about its red

1025
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:27,320
Speaker 1: shifting and the exact measurement of these really old galaxies.

1026
00:50:27,360 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 1: I guess we'll learn more soon. And I look forward

1027
00:50:30,120 --> 00:50:32,560
Speaker 1: to the next wave of space telescope that I hope

1028
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:36,040
Speaker 1: will launch in the twenty thirties, and even larger, more

1029
00:50:36,160 --> 00:50:39,160
Speaker 1: powerful set of eyeballs to teach us the secrets of

1030
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 1: the universe. We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us,

1031
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:52,920
Speaker 1: see you next night. Thanks for listening, and remember that

1032
00:50:53,040 --> 00:50:55,799
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of

1033
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:59,280
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcast from My heart Radio,

1034
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:03,160
Speaker 1: visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1035
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:06,680
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H