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kolembo t1_j9m44a1 wrote

  • The objects date to a time when the universe was just 3% of its current age

  • These galaxies appeared to be roughly 13.5bn years old, placing them about 500m-700m years after the big bang.

  • Last year, scientists spotted four galaxies that date to about 350m years after the big bang...

It's so amazing

We've been able to look back soooo far...

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OorPancake t1_j9lpsav wrote

They might be seeing so far that they're looking at the back of their own heads 13.5Bn years ago.

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kolembo t1_j9m47j9 wrote

Excellent thought

And us at the very beginning...

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TheOzarkWizard t1_j9l94rw wrote

Meaning in the past or future?

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strugglz t1_j9ld8d7 wrote

According to the article way in the distant past when the universe was about 3% of it's current age, which is about 440 million years old. Or 14.3 billion years ago.

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[deleted] t1_j9mrc3k wrote

Then our solar system is in that shot somewhere.

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IFUCKINGLOVEMETH t1_j9nz616 wrote

That's not how that works. When we're 'looking into the past' with telescopes, we're not viewing our own position from the outside. We're viewing a different part of the universe as it was long ago.

On top of that our solar system is probably less than 5 billion years old.

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[deleted] t1_j9oqbu6 wrote

But our galaxy was out there at that time. Everything is moving, traveling farther and farther apart.

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IFUCKINGLOVEMETH t1_j9orf5o wrote

I think your misconception is because you imagine that the universe has a central point it's expanding away from, sort of like the way a firecracker begins at a point then explodes outward from that central point. But that's NOT how the universe expands.

Unlike a firework exploding outward from a central point, the universe has NO central point that every galaxy is moving away from. They're all moving away from eachother, but not from a center. In that sense, you could consider ANY point in the universe to be the center, since every point in the universe is moving away from every other point in the universe.

I hope this video can clarify for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOLHtIWLkHg

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[deleted] t1_j9ortwm wrote

Well that's what we were taught. That the big bang happened from a tiny molecule, smaller than the tip of a pin.

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IFUCKINGLOVEMETH t1_j9osglj wrote

Teachers use simplified analogies to explain concepts to children in terms of things they already understand.

So while it might make sense to explain to a child what the Big Bang is in terms of something like a firework, the analogy is very flawed if you want to understand how cosmic inflation works in a more in-depth way.

My previous comment contains a youtube link, I think the video should clear things up for you. Here it is again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOLHtIWLkHg

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xiodeman t1_j9mvxuu wrote

Everyone reports this as the past. But it’s the present. i.e. if the sun disappeared then the earth would still orbit around “where the sun was” for eight minutes according to how this gets reported.

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BeowulfShaeffer t1_j9ltdhp wrote

This makes me wonder if the heavier elements in our universe have then also been around longer (and in greater abundance) than we thought. Because if massive galaxies were around so soon that suggests supernovas were also going off a lot earlier than we thought, which means more time for heavy elements to form.

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WhatevazCleva t1_j9och1a wrote

You know, I've been watching a lot of videos on cosmology and how we understand our universe at this time.

First off, I was kind of surprised by just how little we actually know about anything. I find it incredible how earth's greatest minds managed to draw so much information about the universe using such a small amount of data. And even Einstein, 100 years later, is still being proven right!

Now, the general consensus is that time started at the big bang. And even if we were to try and think about "what came before" it's impossible to really know because all information prior to the big bang is gone forever. So it seems pointless to even look that far back.

But what eats at me is the fact that I just can't see time "Starting" at the big bang. The universe seems infinite, and so does time. To think of time having a start and end doesn't make sense to me, just like how trying to define the "edge" of the universe also doesn't make sense. (This is of course assuming we are in an infinite universe, which might not be the case - see closed universe theories and a super interesting theory to read about is whether our universe is actually inside a black hole, which is more plausible than one would think!)

Anyway, I think time didn't start at the big bang. I think something must have existed before. But what existed before? Well, the simplest thought would be that whatever existed before the big bang must have been capable of producing the conditions for the big bang. Simple enough right? Makes sense?

So then I look at our universe. The evidence is mounting and mounting that our universe is expanding. I don't think anyone disagrees with this now. It's basically proven. Now the implications this has on the ultimate fate of our universe is quite... Terrifying. If the universe is constantly expanding, and doing so at an accelerating rate, then eventually all that ever was will "break down" into their most fundamental particles and spread out across the universe so much that nothing will ever interact again. And then time will go on... Presumably infinitely and nothing ever happen ever again. That's fucking depressing. But it also kinda doesn't make sense to me and I will explain why.

If the ultimate fate of our universe is that nothing ever happens again, then why didn't this happen prior to the big bang? Whatever existed before, if it follows the same laws of physics, should be subject to the same natural and cosmological laws. But whatever happened before the big bang resulted in conditions that caused the big bang, so entropy was not the ultimate fate of whatever existed before.

So, assuming the laws of physics are indeed consistent pre-big bang and post-big bang, then we can take a pretty big guess that, if entropy was not the ultimate fate of what existed before, maybe entropy is not the ultimate fate of our universe either. But how is this possible when the evidence is mounting that we have an expanding universe?

The answer lies in Dark Energy. Dark energy is theorised to be causing the universe' expansion. And this is sort of where my understanding comes to an end. (That's if I am even making sense thus far XD)

What I found super interesting is a recent study came out suggesting that Black Holes are the source of dark energy. This needs a lot of review, we can't say this is solid, yet. But, for the sake of my comment let's run with it.

If Black Holes are the source of dark energy then entropy is FAR less likely to be the ultimate fate of our universe. Why? Black Holes sort of evaporate over unimaginable timelines. Which means the expansion is not infinite. Which means the universe will eventually stop expanding. If this is the case, then the only force that will be left at the end of everything, will be gravity.

Now, hopefully you can see where this is going: If gravity is indeed the only force at the end of our universe, then particles will move towards each other when the expansion stops. Over an even more unimaginable timeline, we could see everything in the universe slowly clumping back together. And now we can draw a parallel, remember when I said what must have existed before the big bang must have allowed the conditions for the big bang? Well here we are. Once everything gets pulled back together with gravity, perhaps there will be another big bang and the universe starts again. This makes sense to me far more than entropy and this helps to explain "what came before", addressing the fact time did not start at the big bang.

This is a known theory, I'm not being original here. I just wanted to point out that we have a potential study that supports the idea of cyclical universe, and not a universe that will end in entropy for infinite time.

For me that makes existence a little less depressing. I think it makes the universe infinitely more beautiful knowing it's a crazy infinite cycle of chaos and order. Who knows what's going to happen in the next big bang?

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[deleted] t1_j9mt258 wrote

Maybe there was another big bang and our "universe" melded with another.

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farky84 t1_j9nqnzv wrote

Perhaps space and matter are infinite and we only have localized big bangs every now and then here and there.

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