just found galaxy casts doubt on the age of the universe

a galaxy cluster of huge mass is warping spacetime to act similar to a magnifying glass and is increasing the size scale and increasing the brightness of a galaxy much further away and behind the cluster,

(Phys.org) -- Seeing is believing, except when you don't believe what you see. Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found a puzzling arc of light behind an extremely massive cluster of galaxies residing 10 billion light-years away. The galactic grouping, discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, was observed as it existed when the universe was roughly a quarter of its current age of 13.7 billion years.

physorg

"When I first saw it, I kept staring at it, thinking it would go away," said study leader Anthony Gonzalez of the University of Florida in Gainesville, whose team includes researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "According to a statistical analysis, arcs should be extremely rare at that distance. At that early epoch, the expectation is that there are not enough galaxies behind the cluster bright enough to be seen, even if they were 'lensed,' or distorted by the cluster. The other problem is that galaxy clusters become less massive the further back in time you go. So it's more difficult to find a cluster with enough mass to be a good lens for gravitationally bending the light from a distant galaxy."

same source,
so what happens if we find a mature galaxy that is too far away from us and well developed to be their?
do we push back the age of the universe or do we speed up the galaxy formation curves?

An analysis of the arc revealed that the lensed object is a star-forming galaxy that existed 10 billion to 13 billion years ago. The team hopes to use Hubble again to obtain a more accurate distance to the lensed galaxy.

same source

so what happens if we find a fully developed galaxy older than the universe?

xploder

i'm waiting for the day when we look so far back in time, we see our own future.

thanks for the post. the vastness of the universe was one of the first catalysts to get me to start asking questions.

I been saying it all the long. The universe is a lot older that any 13.7 billion years.

Originally posted by XPLodER
so what happens if we find a fully developed galaxy older than the universe?

Either the universe is older than we thought, else the "universe" is part of a multiverse, and this is the origin of this particular galaxy

This unique system constitutes the most distant cluster known to "host" a giant gravitationally lensed arc. Finding this ancient gravitational arc may yield insight into how, during the first moments after the Big Bang, conditions were set up for the growth of hefty clusters in the early universe.

I still maintain in my opinion that the standard theory of creation accepted and known as The Big Bang Theory is quite flawed and will remain an unknown quantity until more sophisticated technology allows the value of it to be realized. For instance, since our entire universe maintains status within a mega-black hole how can any measurement be taken at face value when the results only present a distorted variable.

reply to post by XPLodER

..maybe this is answer
The Big Bang Never Happened

www.youtube.com...

Ill dumb down my theory for the sake of time, but here is what i think the universe is and how big bang fits into it

The universe is a flat layer, like a piece of bread

However we are part of a multiverse, so there are many slices of bread and we are somewhere in the middle of the loaf (this loaf of bread is not 3D by the way, its higher dimensional, and for those who know Quantum mechanics the loaf represents the membrane between the universes which we live on)

Now each of these loafs will be super heaver, and the will most likely attract each other, now over billions of years, two of these loafs will eventually touch, and and the same time explode and repel away from each other again, and then take billions of years to repeat.

Therefore the Big Bang would be a local super event in space time (there was only a big bang at a specific part of our universe, the universe was there before, and fully formed). That would however also mean, that Big Bangs can happen anywhere and at anytime (when two of the universe membranes have spent billions of years attracting each other)

Therefore i think we will find maybe galaxies that defy our understanding of the age of the universe, as we just see a small portion of our universe, and that this part is basically like a newly formed solar system ( in that new galaxies are still constantly forming), the bummer is that the Big Bang (no matter what caused it) left a big bouble of noise around us, and we have already seen as far as we can see, but i believe if we could see beyond, we'd be billions of more fully formed galaxies (As in we'd see fully formed galaxies that had been formed many 10ths of bilions of years ago .

The better we observe the Universe, up close and far away, the more surprises we seem to find. I wonder how far into the past we will be able to see and how small of particles we will find.

Originally posted by WiseThinker


However we are part of a multiverse, so there are many slices of bread and we are somewhere in the middle of the loaf (this loaf of bread is not 3D by the way, its higher dimensional, and for those who know Quantum mechanics the loaf represents the membrane between the universes which we live on)

Please do not dumb down theory you yourself do not understand. The Loaf you speak of (nice Brian Greene reference btw) Is not the membrane between the universes. It is the bulk space in which the membranes reside. The space between said membranes would be hyperspace or bulk space or any number of names its been given.

Our universe exists on the surface of a membrane in M-theory. With neighboring membranes existing with different dimensionality (or possibly the same) than our own.

M-theories creators do not understand their own model so please for your own sake don't dumb yourself down by believing you do.

Quantum mechanics says nothing about membranes or bulk space. These are artifacts of the progression of string theory which is still literally unsubstantiated.

Soooooooo..................

On topic: I would imagine it will certainly require the current big bang/inflationary theories to be modified or thrown out all together.... Some times scrapping the old theory is necessary. Time (lol) will tell.

Nice find S&F for you sploder

Without a clear definition of what the universe actually is, guessing it's age seems rather futile to me.

Originally posted by XPLodER
so what happens if we find a fully developed galaxy older than the universe?

Well, my guess is that it means, perhaps, the universe is older than we initially thought... Or... We could get into more complicated theories, some of which suggest that the big bang was caused by two other universes in existence, bumping into each other, and the parts that "broke off" of those, formed a new universe....Ours...

If that is the case, perhaps a galaxy from one of the older universes, some how managed to stick around?

That is pure speculation, really though.

My guess is that the universe is much older than we thought....

At the end of the day, all this really shows is that we don't really know all that much about the universe, just yet.


Vote Truth_2012 for ATS Regent.

reply to post by XPLodER


Well well well when are we ever going to learn that we don't have a clue as to how old the universe is.

It could be 60 to 100 billion years old and if it was would we ever figure it out with how we look at the universe now.

Originally posted by jsettica
reply to post by XPLodER

 

Well well well when are we ever going to learn that we don't have a clue as to how old the universe is.

It could be 60 to 100 billion years old and if it was would we ever figure it out with how we look at the universe now.

Isn't that like saying "this looks like a difficult problem, let's not bother trying"?

Finding new data which challenges our current understanding isn't something to fear or look down on, but something to be embraced with excitement and interest!

reply to post by XPLodER


this is super exciting news. im hoping they can finally push back the estimated age of the universe.. if so the implications would be crazy.

Uh, perhaps the universe can't be dated because there is no beginning (or end) of time?

Originally posted by mythos
i'm waiting for the day when we look so far back in time, we see our own future.

thanks for the post. the vastness of the universe was one of the first catalysts to get me to start asking questions.

Like if we found a planet in a galaxy far away that resembled earth and while viewing it , watched it get hit by comet. ( we would have the tech to do this at some point in future ), and then 10 years later we get hit by comet and realize that we were just watching our own planet.

So then we realize we can use this to help prevent future disasters to our planet ?


Love the idea.

The universe is a lie. the world is flat and if anyone tells you otherwise rest assured they will burn in eternal hellfire.

I dont think that the universe can be scaled by earth years... I think it is pointless to try and figure out the age of the universe. Maybe someday we can create a new universe and have a better idea time wise.

Originally posted by Tindalos2013

This unique system constitutes the most distant cluster known to "host" a giant gravitationally lensed arc. Finding this ancient gravitational arc may yield insight into how, during the first moments after the Big Bang, conditions were set up for the growth of hefty clusters in the early universe.

I still maintain in my opinion that the standard theory of creation accepted and known as The Big Bang Theory is quite flawed and will remain an unknown quantity until more sophisticated technology allows the value of it to be realized. For instance, since our entire universe maintains status within a mega-black hole how can any measurement be taken at face value when the results only present a distorted variable.

I agree, the "theory" and that is all it is, is based on the idea that all of reality exits "out there" and we can measure things by the constant of the speed of light, as if that is the only baseline. But, I have read that that speed isn't constant at all, at least when measured on earth. Even more curious, who said the speed of light measured on earth, in earth based controlled arena's is the constant in all of matter? If walking on the moon is different then walking on the earth, it would seem to me that the speed of the constant might change too, and if so, then how far away are things really?

sitting here and guessing what happened, from this tiny moment of all of creation is the height of hubris. We assume and wow is it an assumption, that there was a beginning, a middle - where we are, and an end. And because we are so sure that is how everything, everywhere is, we assume that the begging was a pop and the end was a pop, and we're super smart because we know all of life is a beginning, middle and end. What if there was no beginning, only a middle? what if nothing is expanding, but collapsing but our eyes simply can't figure that out?

The theories are not the problem really, it is the hubris with which the theories are emphatically stated as absolute fact and case closed is what is funny to me.

Just a vague "throwing this out there", so for whatever it's worth...

If our universe is a black hole, then it may be part of a larger universe (or the same one existing at a different point in time... pretty boggling). Anyway what I'm getting at is that perhaps previously existing galaxies were sucked in and became a part of it. Even stranger... maybe when they're sucked in they appear further back in time. Like galaxy A and then galaxy B get sucked in, but now galaxy B is in the past relative to galaxy A.

Anyway... Just having fun theorizing.

While it may have a "start" somewhere in the back of time, i would suspect that the "space" that our universe inhabits is, for all intents and purposes, infinitesimally ancient. There is no beginning or end.

I would also suspect that this data, if it fleshes out, would support the "universe formation" proposed in Brane Theory. This would allow for far distant, yet far too ancient galaxies to exist outside of the event that gave rise to what we are calling "the universe" currently (actually, an infinitesimally small piece of "space" when compared to the whole).