One possible, maybe even likely, outcome over the surprise that galaxy formation proceeded more quickly that we thought, is that we will gain further knowledge on the roles that Black Holes play in galaxy formation and structure building due to the much greater density of the very early Universe.... which only further bolsters Big Bang - ie: the further back in time we look, the hotter and more dense the Universe was..

Heads I win, Tails you lose.

The earlier galactic structure complexity than was hypothesized is at least observed and is evidence of something and certainly more will follow and likely Big Bang will be refined but not trashed. That's betting on the preponderance of actual evidence. Plasma Cosmology is certainly an interesting hypothesis but it's most fundamental requirement has zero evidence. To me that's much like the Mult-Universes Hypothesis -interesting and backed by some Mathematics but zero observation so far.

There are no winners or losers among those who are invested in naught but discovery, only among those who feel they have a favorite horse in the race. I don't give a ratzass whether Big Bang, Plasma Cosmology, or something else is the final answer as it doesn't affect me in the slightest in my life since the fact remains, however it all started, I am here for a time and will sooner rather than later be gone. If there is some sort of afterlife, great. If not, that's great too. I'm just glad I ever lived. This Universe is a wondrous place, including quite a few people on this little podunk planet, so I consider myself very fortunate to be alive in 2022. It'd be even better if I could be around to see 3022 but that is certainly not going to happen.

As a young boy I once bought a slab of Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum which came wrapped in a short cartoon. One notable cartoon had the 2 boys talking and one said "Id like to know what's in store for me like wqhen will I die". The other boy said "No way! I'd rather know where I'm going to die" . The first boy asked "Why would you want to know that?" and the 2nd boy replied "I'd never go near that place!"

I suppose the point is, aside from maybe getting a smile from someone, is The End is far more important to each of us than The Beginning.

Apparently Henry IV had a yen to go on a crusade but he never did because someone told him he would die in Jerusalem. He actually died in his palace in a room called the Jerusalem Chamber.

The track record for Science progressing nicely from Hypothesis > Theory > Fact (with overwhelming odds at least) on this day in 2022 is looking rather spectacular.

Voyager 1 launched 45 years ago and after spending all that time in the most hostile environment imaginable (Hell has nothing on Deep Space) has been coaxed back to delivering useful data from hundreds of millions of miles away.

Black Holes, once considered likely a Mathematical point of hypothetical interest but unable to actually exist at all, showed clues that led to the likelihood that Black Holes, even unimaginably supermassive ones, exist in the many millions if not billions including at the centers of all galaxies, and now we have photographs of 2 of them.

It was proposed less than a hundred years ago that perhaps solar systems, something like our own, were common and there were maybe a few planetary systems about. Now we have evidence for over 5000 exoplanets based on watching how their Suns wobble from Gravity or their light dims with occlusion. Now JWST has the first photographs of an exoplanet.

Small steps with deep evidence apparently works and rather well.

Few years ago while on an operating table waiting for the doctor to put a sten inside me, all of a sudden I feel a cold something surge from my leg upward. Then I saw dozen of men and women in patient gown singing in a very beautiful song that I never heard before in my life. All along I also heard voice of the doctor giving orders to the nurses.

I told my wife about the anecdote later and she could not stop laughing: "The government is so short of money on healthcare...how can they hire people to sing for you".

I am agnostic but now I do believe firmly in the afterlife.
But singing in a hospital for eternity is not my cup of soup.

I suppose it's to be expected that this thread would drift off from the Science of JWST considering in the very first post, business_kid opened that door by buying into the lie (largely spread by Eric Lerner at IAI that "the Big Bang Never Happened") that due to JWST "scientists are in a panic", but, leclerc78, it seems your last post, while interesting, has zero to do with JWST, other than displaying fairly low standards for evidence. That post belongs in the Faith and Religion MegaThread.

It is a good thing you survived the operation and also perhaps that, you found some sort of comfort from an experience born of stress and anesthesia, but it does speak to jumping to conclusions, the kind that looks no further than Eric Lerner's agenda-ridden assumptions. I apparently offended some theists in the past here by noting that if I heard a voice in my head, even absent drugs and life transforming stress, literally saying, "This is God speaking to you. I am real", I would go see doctors to try to discover what was wrong with me that caused such a delusion. This is not because I don't believe in God (I don't) but rather that even if there IS some Divine Creator, I doubt very much He/She/It would bother to speak to me and even if He/She/It did, that I would understand such a creature.

I agree with you Enorbet. That post should not be there.
But my point is: We cannot be 100% sure about certain things in life. People talk about ghosts and get bashed.
People talk about UFO and get bashed. People talk about life elsewhere in the universe and get bashed.
I don't know where the bashers get the "God's" given right to decide about things like that.
I read and follow up these since I was a teen, starting in the 1950's, and I am glad that at the end of my life,
the bashers keep loosing ground day by day. JWST makes my day.

Just FTR it doesn't bother me since I don't mind tangents but it's not my thread and OP has called me out even when I specifically referred to JWST data. Mostly he'd said the thread wasn't about Big Bang, but we've all seen he opened that door. I don't know if he would find someone who apparently thinks Big Bang didn't happen counter to his concepts for the thread.

51% - 99% is fine by me on a sliding scale and speculation is fun.


I think ghosts are a bit more woo-woo than speculation and UFOs are real as long as we each understand the "U". It's when people say "These objects are unidentified, therefore they must be visiting alien craft" that my defenses rise up. I don't know anyone who thinks that life elsewhere is impossible so any bashers of life elsewhere are blanket skeptics and of no concern to critical thinkers.

Absolutely agreed! A very good friend of mine works at Goddard Space Flight Center so I have been somewhat closely involved in news of JWST from the beginning 20+ years ago. I watched the launch with first bated breath and then with jump-for-joy glee. I'm especially pleased that the raw, hard data is open to the public and quite a few amateur scientists have already made important contributions with deep study of that data. Just like FOSS Linux, the more eyes, the better... well as long as those eyes aren't lying about the data but eventually truth usually comes out as it already has involving the Big Bang panic lies.

Just a little late nit-picking...

That's the problem with imagination. It's impossible to breake through it's borders...

But knowledge of scientists is all you need. Do a ddg...

Again I'll put it down to lack of knowledge...

I've followed the mighty Halton Arp battles over the decades and have quite a collection of scientific papers (updated to ~2021). Will provide a link to an upload later, when back on pc.

My take? I'm just happy the truth has nothing to do with opinions...

Red Shift papers

Warning! Haven't upgraded to pro yet, so unless you're using an ad-blocker, you'll probably be greeted by one...

Then you need to broaden you horizons! Perhaps this is closer to the real problem...

The real problem is that religion (including the religion of atheism) have so tainted the language in which any discussion must take place, that simply introducing the concept of a Creator is instantly polarizing to the degree that discovery of Truth is blocked before any actual communication of thought can begin.

@Jan K. Halton Arp! Great to see someone else take note of his ideas!

I suspect that quantized (and intrinsic) red shift, and its consequences, is an idea whose time has simply been deferred.

It seems to me important with many words with a range of definitions, general and specific, that any scientific or philosophical commentary does best when it defines it's usage. We've discussed that there is a HUGE gap between popular use of "theory" and that of scientific theory.

Similarly I think we have to be careful and diligent when tossing about "religion".

When used in a strict sense, religion is defined like this...

By this strict definition there is no "atheism" just some atheists who deny a single concept with no organization, no defining Myth or "Bible", and not necessarily having anything else in common. There are no churches for atheists, no spiritual leader, and no doctrine, clergy, or dogma.

The closest even a very loose definition of religion comes anywhere close to revealing anything meaningful about SOME atheists is ....

That definition is so loose it can apply to anyone who has a passion for anything. Since there is no atheism belief system, simply a rejection of any evidence that supports the entire idea of "the supernatural" as actual objective evidence, it would be like collectivising all people who don't believe in Unicorns as belonging to "Aunicornism". In the realm of events and circumstances with any basis in fact, nobody calls those who have confidence that Gravity is real, if only minimally defined, as "Gravityists".

The assertion of "including the religion of atheism" really just makes no sense since it is either meaningless or an outright destruction of the term "religion". It is of some interest that such claims are almost always made by the religious, and never by atheists.

Note: I should make some allowance for atheists as actual atheists since recently there has been a spate of religious people playing a role as "I used to be an atheist, but..." whom when digging deeper are revealed as mere drama, that the person making the claim has zero evidence they ever rejected the God concept. It's yet another case of "It's true because I said so" (hearsay in any "court" adhering to Rules of Evidence) - expecting belief with zero backing.

Also, what has this to do with JWST or even Science in general other than recognizing different people can have VERY different standards for evidence? Some trust and regularly consult 2000 year old thought as guidance in almost everything that matters. Some don't consult Bronze Age books for guidance in Plumbing, Diet, Morality etc other than as a window on History and a measuring stick for progress.

Atheism is such a weird concept. Like, if I'm not playing pretend that any one of these from any list in this list - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_deities - exist - I'm an atheist? But once I start believing in Ptah and still ignore every other one from those lists - then I am not an atheist. Whatever.

What exactly is confusing? Are you aware "atheist" is short for "not theist"?

As a software developer you are presumably familiar with the notion of testing for null or not null - in the latter case it doesn't matter if a variable's value is one, a million, or a complex object - only whether that variable has a value assigned (or not).

I suspect Pagonis was only confused by the inconsistency. IOW religious people deny the existence of thousands of divine deities because or l;ack of evidence and critical thought but draw the line at "The One True Divine". I think he is asking "Why stop there?". One important attribute of logic is consistency, and "one bad apple can spoil the bunch" perhaps leading to the blanket skepticism that denies Earth as a Globe, Deep Time, Evolution and Big Bang, the latter of which began this misguided thread.