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James Webb Telescope

Puppycow said:
:confused:

Only if there were a gigantic mirror, millions or billions of light-years away.

We are, of course, looking away from the earth and from the solar system when we look out into deep space, so naturally we would not see the earth somewhere out there in deep space.

If, somehow, light from our own galaxy could be bent by 180 degrees at some far away place, I suppose it is conceivable, but even with gravitational lensing, light rarely bends that sharply except near the event horizon of a black hole. Or if there is a mirror, of course.
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What about those that claim if you travel in a straight line long and far enough away from Earth, you will end up back at Earth? (not my claim or one I accept).
 
Puppycow said:
:confused:

Only if there were a gigantic mirror, millions or billions of light-years away.

We are, of course, looking away from the earth and from the solar system when we look out into deep space, so naturally we would not see the earth somewhere out there in deep space.

If, somehow, light from our own galaxy could be bent by 180 degrees at some far away place, I suppose it is conceivable, but even with gravitational lensing, light rarely bends that sharply except near the event horizon of a black hole. Or if there is a mirror, of course.
Click to expand...

We are looking billions of years into the past.

Was our solar system not somewhere else in our 360 degree field of view at some point in those billions of years?
 
ynot said:
What about those that claim if you travel in a straight line long and far enough away from Earth, you will end up back at Earth? (not my claim or one I accept).
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It might even be true (for all I know), but the problem seems to be that the distance you would have to travel is some ridiculously ginormous distance. Much farther than light would have had time to travel given the age of the universe.

I think this is the relevant Wikipedia article on the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe

Several potential topological or geometric attributes of the universe interest may be discussed. Some of these are:[2]

  1. Boundedness (whether the universe is finite or infinite)
  2. Flat (zero curvature), hyperbolic (negative curvature), or spherical (positive curvature)
  3. Connectivity: how the universe is put together, i.e., simply connected space or multiply connected space.
There are certain logical connections among these properties. For example, a universe with positive curvature is necessarily finite.[3] Although it is usually assumed in the literature that a flat or negatively curved universe is infinite, this need not be the case if the topology is not the trivial one: for example, a three-torus is flat but finite.[3]

The exact shape is still a matter of debate in physical cosmology, but experimental data from various independent sources (WMAP, BOOMERanG, and Planck for example) confirm that the universe is flat with only a 0.4% margin of error.[4][5][6]
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JWST finds evidence of god . . .

picture.php


. . OOOOOPS!



.
 
Skeptical Greg said:
We are looking billions of years into the past.

Was our solar system not somewhere else in our 360 degree field of view at some point in those billions of years?
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For our solar system to appear in the past, that would require the solar system getting to where we are faster than the light from it would.

This is is the main reason this whole big bang and expanding universe looks like a bad idea.

If we are that the center of the observable universe, then as we peeer 13.5 billion years into the past, somehow everything should be a lot smaller.

But it seems we see mature galaxies at all distances, farther and farther.

Some of these in this image will be estimated to have light travel times of +20 billion years. Hold on tight, folks.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
because of inflation, everything is at the center of its observable universe.
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But, then everything should be smaller! :-)

I am trying to imagine the universe that starts with tiny little stars and galaxies that grow bigger over billions of years.
 
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Sorry... I realize I shouldn't have taken the bait. This was a nice l, cordial, and informative discussion. I hope it can stay that way.
 
jadebox said:
Sorry... I realize I shouldn't have taken the bait. This was a nice l, cordial, and informative discussion. I hope it can stay that way.
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I'm not sure who you are responding to, but I think cosmic inflation was referenced, and maybe economic inflation was stood-in for a joke.

But 40 years ago the BBT didn't make sense. And Alan Guth said, what if all the galaxies popped up instantly. We're going to need more dark energy for that, based on what we're seeing.
 
ynot said:
JWST finds evidence of god . . .

[ qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1452&pictureid=13148[ /qimg]

. . OOOOOPS!
Click to expand...
That's funny. :D

I hate to say it but so far the image isn't all that exciting; maybe when we get a better description of what the gravitational lensing is showing us.

I know there is more to come. I shall await said "more" before I get too excited. There are only so many superlatives in the English language so I'm saving a few of them up.
 
Mike Helland said:
...

But 40 years ago the BBT didn't make sense. And Alan Guth said, what if all the galaxies popped up instantly. We're going to need more dark energy for that, based on what we're seeing.
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That's interesting. I shall have to look again at his work.
 
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