More trouble for big bang theory

The European VTT has published today a press release about a new
discovery of two very old galaxies interacting 12 billion years ago.

They say:

quote
'When we studied the light from this gamma-ray burst we didn't know what
we might find. It was a surprise that the cool gas in these two galaxies
in the early Universe proved to have such an unexpected chemical
make-up,' explains Sandra Savaglio (Max-Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany), lead author of the paper
describing the new results. 'These galaxies have more heavy elements
than have ever been seen in a galaxy so early in the evolution of the
Universe. We didn't expect the Universe to be so mature, so chemically
evolved, so early on.'
end quote

What they have detected is nothing less than galaxies with MORE
heavy elements than our own sun.
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1143/

quote
It is expected that galaxies in the young Universe will be found to
contain smaller amounts of heavier elements than galaxies at the present
day, such as the Milky Way. The heavier elements are produced during the
lives and deaths of generations of stars, gradually enriching the gas in
the galaxies [4]. Astronomers can use the chemical enrichment in
galaxies to indicate how far they are through their lives. But the new
observations, surprisingly, revealed that some galaxies were already
very rich in heavy elements less than two billion years after the Big
Bang. Something unthinkable until recently.
end quote

Yes, something "unthinkable", nontheless real. More and more
observations point to a "primitive" Universe very much like our own
neighborhood, with "metal" rich galaxies incompatible with any bing bang
that would have happened only 1.7 billion years earlier.

The scientific article is:

http://www.eso.org/public/archives/r...43/eso1143.pdf

[Mod. note: non-ASCII characters removed. Please post in plain 7-bit
ASCII -- mjh]

"jacob navia" schreef in bericht
...
The European VTT has published today a press release about a new
discovery of two very old galaxies interacting 12 billion years ago.

They say:

quote
'When we studied the light from this gamma-ray burst we didn't know what
we might find. It was a surprise that the cool gas in these two galaxies
in the early Universe proved to have such an unexpected chemical
make-up,' explains Sandra Savaglio (Max-Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany), lead author of the paper
describing the new results. 'These galaxies have more heavy elements
than have ever been seen in a galaxy so early in the evolution of the
Universe. We didn't expect the Universe to be so mature, so chemically
evolved, so early on.'
end quote

I do not understand why the subject of this thread is:
"More trouble for the big bang theory."
The trouble is in the age of the Universe.
Maybe the Universe is much older than previous assumed.
Is that possible ?
What are the arguments in disfavour ?

Nicolaas Vroom

jacob navia wrote in
:

The European VTT has published today a press release about a new
discovery of two very old galaxies interacting 12 billion years ago.

[...]

Why is this problematic for the big bang theory?

In answering, try to distinguish the various models of galactic formation
which are not the same thing as the big bang theory.

Le 03/11/11 08:20, eric gisse a écrit :
jacob wrote in
:

The European VTT has published today a press release about a new

That should have been "VLT" not "VTT". Sorry about that :-)

discovery of two very old galaxies interacting 12 billion years ago.

[...]

Why is this problematic for the big bang theory?


This is not just *my* opinion but the published opinion of the authors
of the paper that qualify this facts as "unthinkable" a few years ago,
as they say in the press release.

Because as far as heavy elements are concerned, the Universe just
after the supposed "bang" should have been very poor in heavy elements
since they arise from a slow accumulation of material processed by the
stars.

Iron rich galaxies should appear later in the history of the universe
than heavy elements poor galaxies, that should show up at the beginning
of the Universe.

The two observed galaxies are just 1500 million years after the supposed
bang, a lapse of time that is NOTHING at galactic scales. Our own
galaxy has time to make only 6 revolutions in that time. Note that a
main sequence star like our sun has spent not even 20% of its expected
life-time at 1500 million years. Anyway you have to give a time of at
least 100 million years to allow the gas at the supposed bang to cool
and condense into stars. ALl in all is it astonishing that so much heavy
elements are present: they have to be formed in exploding stars,
ejected, mixed into the gas clouds, etc. And this process must be
efficient enough to show up in the spectrum of a galaxy only in 1000
million years.

Obviously BB theory is a very "plastic" theory and will be "adjusted"
to fit the observations invoking some "ad hoc" explanation like the
one proposed in the article that invokes extremely short lived
generations of stars that would create and disseminate heavy elements
into the galaxies at incredible rates.

In answering, try to distinguish the various models of galactic formation
which are not the same thing as the big bang theory.

In other words to save BB theory you will sacrifice galaxy formation
theory.


jacob at jacob dot remcomp dot fr

In article ,
jacob navia wrote:

The two observed galaxies are just 1500 million years after the supposed
bang, a lapse of time that is NOTHING at galactic scales.

But a very long lapse of time by the scales of star formation and by
the lifespan of massive stars, which are surely the relevant scales if
you're asking questions about nucleosynthesis. It's enough time for
many generations of O-class stars to form, burn up the hydrogen to
heavy elements, and supernova.

Tom

On Nov 3, 12:28*pm, Thomas Womack
wrote:

But a very long lapse of time by the scales of star formation and by
the lifespan of massive stars, which are surely the relevant scales if
you're asking questions about nucleosynthesis. *It's enough time for
many generations of O-class stars to form, burn up the hydrogen to
heavy elements, and supernova.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No doubt there are reasonable ways to get around this inconvenient new
set of observations.

However, not long ago we were assured that galaxies as distant as 12
bly would be relatively low in processed metals, and that would be
diagnostic of their youth.

[Mod. note: 'citation needed' -- mjh]

Then rude nature spoils the status quo.

So theorists just move the goalposts for finding pristine pure H and
He systems to an ever-earlier era.

Does anyone know of a definitive statement that abundant metals *must*
not be present before a certain z value if the standard cosmological
paradigm is correct?

In other words, do we have any definitive predictions that prevent
moving goalposts, hand-waving and 'saving the phenomena'? Do we have
the fundamental ingredients of scientific testing in this subject
area?

RLO
Fractal Cosmology

In article ,
jacob navia writes:
"metal" rich galaxies incompatible with any bing bang
that would have happened only 1.7 billion years earlier.

http://www.eso.org/public/archives/r...43/eso1143.pdf

There's a big difference between "a surprise" on the one hand and
"incompatible" on the other. As Thomas mentioned, the timescale for
one generation of stars is 10-100 Myr, so there's plenty of time for
enrichment, especially if the IMF is top-heavy.

This is not the first paper that has shown solar-level metallicities
in this redshift range. See Fig. 8 of the paper, for example.
What's new is that the inferred metallicities are well above solar.
That's understandable if the galaxies are especially massive. Also,
the line of sight is special; these are not "whole galaxy average"
metallicities.

--
Help keep our newsgroup healthy; please don't feed the trolls.
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

On 3/11/2011 2:25 AM, jacob navia wrote:
The European VTT has published today a press release about a new
discovery of two very old galaxies interacting 12 billion years ago.

They say:

quote
'When we studied the light from this gamma-ray burst we didn't know what
we might find. It was a surprise that the cool gas in these two galaxies
in the early Universe proved to have such an unexpected chemical
make-up,' explains Sandra Savaglio (Max-Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany), lead author of the paper
describing the new results. 'These galaxies have more heavy elements
than have ever been seen in a galaxy so early in the evolution of the
Universe. We didn't expect the Universe to be so mature, so chemically
evolved, so early on.'
end quote


May I point out that these observations are consistent with my theory
of Curvature Cosmology. The paper "Observational evidence favors a
static universe."
shows that the evidence in favour of an expanding universe is not
as strong as most would believe. A second aim is to provide a
complete exposition of my alternative theory "Curvature Cosmology"
(CC) and to show its excellent agreement with
nearly all cosmological observations. It is a tired light cosmology
where the redshift arises from an interaction of photons with
curved space-time (curvature redshift). The other major hypothesis
is Curvature Pressure which stabilises the static universe. I believe
that the model is in complete agreement with general relativity
and quantum physics. Except for the modelling of different
cosmological objects The theory only has one free parameter-
the average density.

A major difference between cosmologies in an expanding universe
and that in a static universe is time dilation. Whereas a tired
light process could explain the energy loss of photons it cannot
produce the effect of time dilation on the rate of arrival of photons.
In an expanding universe cosmology the equations for the distance
modulus and for the angular size include a term, (1+z), to allow for
time dilation. Since the similar equations for a static-universe
cosmology do include this term its presence (or absence) makes
a suitable test for determining whether the universe is expanding.

Recently I have published three papers in the Journal of Cosmology
that investigates this proposal. The editor required that I split the
original paper into three parts and the references a
http://journalofcosmology.com/crawford1.pdf : 2022, JCos, 13, 3875-3946
http://journalofcosmology.com/crawford2.pdf : 2022, JCos, 13, 3947-3999
http://journalofcosmology.com/crawford3.pdf : 2022, JCos, 13, 4000-4057

A single file version that is essentially identical to the three papers
is available at arXiv 1009.0953: http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0953
It includes a table of contents, hyperlinks and several minor corrections.
Be warned it has 96 pages and is about 1MB in length.
It is also available on my website:
http://www.davidcrawford.bigpondhosting.com

Steve Willner wrote in
:

In article ,
jacob navia writes:
"metal" rich galaxies incompatible with any bing bang
that would have happened only 1.7 billion years earlier.

http://www.eso.org/public/archives/r...s/eso1143/eso1
143.pdf

There's a big difference between "a surprise" on the one hand and
"incompatible" on the other. As Thomas mentioned, the timescale for
one generation of stars is 10-100 Myr, so there's plenty of time for
enrichment, especially if the IMF is top-heavy.

Its' gotta be. The first generation of stars would have been put together
in an overall smaller volume of space with no structures to diffuse the
initial mass densities. How massive is anyone's guess but if someone said
'above a thousand solar masses' I wouldn't even blink.


This is not the first paper that has shown solar-level metallicities
in this redshift range. See Fig. 8 of the paper, for example.
What's new is that the inferred metallicities are well above solar.
That's understandable if the galaxies are especially massive. Also,
the line of sight is special; these are not "whole galaxy average"
metallicities.


Do we have a good model for the metal output of a star as a function of
its' mass prior to detonation (phrased slightly diff b/c some stars shed a
solar mass or five into the four winds...)?

While I have no real expectation that the metal output would be constant
across stars I don't have a real firm grasp on what the impact of mass
would be beyond 'more star means more metal' because all stars go through
the same isotope burning sequence. Only difference I could imagine is the
fraction that survives because fatter stars give less time for circulation
of material into the core but that may be mistaken.

jacob navia wrote in
:

Le 03/11/11 08:20, eric gisse a écrit :
jacob wrote in
:

The European VTT has published today a press release about a new

That should have been "VLT" not "VTT". Sorry about that :-)

discovery of two very old galaxies interacting 12 billion years ago.

[...]

Why is this problematic for the big bang theory?


This is not just *my* opinion but the published opinion of the authors
of the paper that qualify this facts as "unthinkable" a few years ago,
as they say in the press release.

Well as long as they said it in the press release...


Because as far as heavy elements are concerned, the Universe just
after the supposed "bang" should have been very poor in heavy elements
since they arise from a slow accumulation of material processed by the
stars.

Just after would have zero metal as cosmology defines the term. Even
Lithium would be in the parts per million level, and nothing relevant after
that.


Iron rich galaxies should appear later in the history of the universe
than heavy elements poor galaxies, that should show up at the
beginning of the Universe.

The two observed galaxies are just 1500 million years after the
supposed bang, a lapse of time that is NOTHING at galactic scales.

So?

Even a star that is in the neighborhood of just 150 solar masses has a
lifetime measured in a few million years. The lifetime does not improve as
they get larger, and they would have been pretty damn large back in the
day.

I don't see why you consider 1.7 billion years a short period of time.
That's a lot of high mass star generations. Galaxies don't even take that
long to form, in fact I believe they form at about 10% of that age however
I don't have a ref to back this up at the moment.

[...]

In answering, try to distinguish the various models of galactic
formation which are not the same thing as the big bang theory.

In other words to save BB theory you will sacrifice galaxy formation
theory.

Why do you think they are synonyms?




jacob at jacob dot remcomp dot fr