An old galaxy at z=7.1

The scientific paper is he

http://www.eso.org/public/archives/r...8/eso1508a.pdf

The press release is he

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1508/

From the paper's abstract:
quote

Here we report thermal dust emission from an archetypal early universe
star-forming galaxy, A1689-zD1. We detect its stellar continuum in
spectroscopy and determine its redshift to be z = 7.5+/- 0.2 from a
spectroscopic detection of the Ly alpha break. A1689-zD1 is
representative of the star-forming population during reionisation, with
a total star- formation rate of about 12 M sun per yr. The galaxy is
highly evolved: it has a large stellar mass, and is heavily enriched in
dust, with a dust-to-gas ratio close to that of the Milky Way. Dusty,
evolved galaxies are thus present among the fainter star-forming
population at z 7, in spite of the very short time since they first
appeared.

end quote

Note the language: They do not say "We have a result that contradicts
obviously the Big Bang theory".

[Mod. note: that's because it doesn't -- mjh]

They say in the press release
quote
'Although the exact origin of galactic dust remains obscure,' explains
Darach Watson, 'our findings indicate that its production occurs very
rapidly, within only 500 million years of the beginning of star
formation in the Universe -- a very short cosmological time frame, given
that most stars live for billions of years.'
end quote

We have then:

(1)
Our galaxy is ready to form stars almost immediately after the supposed
"bang".
(2)
It enters immediately into a star forming frenzy that stops abruptly to
give the impression of an aged galaxy forming only around 12 stars per year.
(3)
Somehow it manages to form enormous quantities of DUST, a tell-tale sign
of mature galaxies.

AMAZING the explanations of proponents of BB Theory!

This is a very preliminary result of ALMA. Now that this first result is
out, I am confident that we will see more and more such surprises in the
very near future.

jacob

---------------------------------------------

To the moderator:

I copied from the abstract, opened up "vi", saved in a file, eliminated
all non ascii characters, verified with "od -c" recopied into the

[Mod. note: non-ASCII characters (the quotes cut and pasted from the
press release) manually removed as usual -- mjh]

On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 1:48:40 PM UTC-5, jacob navia wrote:
The scientific paper is he

http://www.eso.org/public/archives/r...8/eso1508a.pdf

The press release is he

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1508/



Paper is available at arXiv.org

On 3/3/15 12:48 PM, jacob navia wrote:
The scientific paper is he

http://www.eso.org/public/archives/r...8/eso1508a.pdf

The press release is he

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1508/

I assume this all falls within the Big Bang theory.
But interestingly,
The paper indicates "unknown dust temperature"
and the press release indicates "cold gas and dust emissions"
How cold is cold?
Is the dust at CMBR temperature at z = 7.1
2.7*(1+7.1)^1 = 22 K
or even lower?

Richard D Saam

Le 03/03/2015 19:48, jacob navia a écrit :
Note the language: They do not say "We have a result that contradicts
obviously the Big Bang theory".

[Mod. note: that's because it doesn't -- mjh]

OK.

Let's go in steps.

Step BIG A: Dust
----------

1) Dust production in galaxies is a cumulative process. The older the
galaxy, the more dust it has. This is because supernova explosions
produce the dust, as has been recently found. [1], [2].

2) The galaxy A1689-zD1 has the same level of dust as our galaxy that
is probably 12 billion years old. Since that galaxy is at z= 7.5, it is
observed at a time when the universe was around 700 million years old,
hence it can't be older than that [3].

To accomodate observations with an age of both 0.7 Gy and 12 Gy we must
assume some process is eliminating dust in the milky way, process that
doesn't happen in A1689-zD1. Or maybe some other mysterious and
obviously "ad hoc" process. I am open to suggestions by BB people.


Step BIG B: Star formation.

The galaxy A1689-zD1 (if I understood the paper correctly) makes only 12
stars like the sun per year. In the paper, we have:

quote
The galaxy has already formed much of its stars and metals. Taken
together, these lines of evidence point to a picture of A1689-zD1
consistently forming stars at a moderate rate since z ~ 9, or possibly
having passed through its extreme starburst very rapidly and now in a
declining phase of star-formation.
end quote

Well, that must have been an EXTREMELY rapid star formation phase:
just 500 million years for forming all the millions of stars that make a
galaxy! We should subtract the "dark ages" time that has been shrinking
a LOT but should be at least 100 - 150 Million years. That leaves us
with only 350 Million years to form all those stars!

Perspective

I see that the arguments that I have advanced here since at least 2005
are being confirmed. In a message here on Sep 28th, 2005 I pointed out
That HUDF-JD2 that at that time was observed with 6 z 8 that had
stopped star formation. That galaxy has 8 times the mass of the milky way.

In another message on Nov 24 2004 I was reporting that BB theory had
"exploded" because of the discovery of a black hole 1 billion solar
masses was discovered at 12.8 billion ly. Five days ago astronomers
discovered at the same distance a black hole with 12 billion solar
masses. As the observable universe expands (because of better telescope
technology) all my previous arguments are confirmed...


[1] http://phys.org/news/2013-01-herschel-cosmic.html
[2] http://www.space.com/26482-cosmic-du...xplosions.html
[3] http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html I just plugged
z=7.5 in the "z" parameter leaving all other parameters at their default
values.

In article ,
jacob navia wrote:
1) Dust production in galaxies is a cumulative process. The older the
galaxy, the more dust it has. This is because supernova explosions
produce the dust, as has been recently found. [1], [2].

2) The galaxy A1689-zD1 has the same level of dust as our galaxy that
is probably 12 billion years old.

No. Read the paper. It has the same *gas to dust ratio*. It does not
have the same *amount of dust*. There is much less gas, much less dust
and many fewer stars than in the MW.

Well, that must have been an EXTREMELY rapid star formation phase:
just 500 million years for forming all the millions of stars that make a
galaxy! We should subtract the "dark ages" time that has been shrinking
a LOT but should be at least 100 - 150 Million years. That leaves us
with only 350 Million years to form all those stars!

The estimated stellar mass is 1.7 x 10^9 solar masses. So that's a
star formation rate of about 5 solar masses a year by your
calculation, actually less than the current star formation rate (which
they seem to have estimated by adding the UV and IR numbers).

In another message on Nov 24 2004 I was reporting that BB theory had
"exploded" because of the discovery of a black hole 1 billion solar
masses was discovered at 12.8 billion ly. Five days ago astronomers
discovered at the same distance a black hole with 12 billion solar
masses. As the observable universe expands (because of better telescope
technology) all my previous arguments are confirmed...

None of these are, or ever have been, arguments against the BB model
because they don't present any *quantitative* argument that these things
cannot be observed in the BB model. Numbers matter. Waving your hands
about and claiming that selected observations are consistent with your
preconceptions is not science.

Martin
--
Martin Hardcastle
School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Please replace the xxx.xxx.xxx in the header with herts.ac.uk to mail me

Le 04/03/2015 09:20, Martin Hardcastle a écrit :
In article ,
jacob navia wrote:
1) Dust production in galaxies is a cumulative process. The older the
galaxy, the more dust it has. This is because supernova explosions
produce the dust, as has been recently found. [1], [2].

2) The galaxy A1689-zD1 has the same level of dust as our galaxy that
is probably 12 billion years old.

No. Read the paper. It has the same *gas to dust ratio*. It does not
have the same *amount of dust*. There is much less gas, much less dust
and many fewer stars than in the MW.


That's exactly what I said. The same level of dust.

Well, that must have been an EXTREMELY rapid star formation phase:
just 500 million years for forming all the millions of stars that make a
galaxy! We should subtract the "dark ages" time that has been shrinking
a LOT but should be at least 100 - 150 Million years. That leaves us
with only 350 Million years to form all those stars!

The estimated stellar mass is 1.7 x 10^9 solar masses. So that's a
star formation rate of about 5 solar masses a year by your
calculation, actually less than the current star formation rate (which
they seem to have estimated by adding the UV and IR numbers).


Looking this a little bit ore, I went to one of the many sites that
accept the BB Theory as true: The "James Webb Space Telescope" site of
NASA. There it says:

quote
Until around 400 million years after the Big Bang, the Universe was a
very dark place. There were no stars, and there were no galaxies.
end quote

This would mean that our galaxy make all the stars and all that dust in
100 million years, supposing that the authors of the paper are right whe
they suppose that the galaxy was fully developed at z=9.

A more troublesome fact for BB theory is the report of the Planck satellite:
(http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/...smic-dark-ages)

quote
"After the CMB was released, the universe was still very different from
the one we live in today, and it took a long time until the first stars
were able to form," says Marco Bersanelli of Università degli Studi di
Milano, Italy. "Planck's observations of the CMB polarization now tell
us that these 'dark ages' ended some 550 million years after the Big
Bang – more than 100 million years later than previously thought," he adds
end quote

That would mean that this galaxy couldn't exist because according to
observations it was fully formed (and with a lot of DUST!) 700 million
years after the supposed "bang". It would need to be fully formed in
only 150 million years

!!!

Anyway:

What you calculate above is the rate needed to form the stars seen, but
the TOTAL number of stars created is MUCH higher since there must be a
lot of stars that were created, lived and died to make all that dust!

All that in just 150 million years.

In another message on Nov 24 2004 I was reporting that BB theory had
"exploded" because of the discovery of a black hole 1 billion solar
masses was discovered at 12.8 billion ly. Five days ago astronomers
discovered at the same distance a black hole with 12 billion solar
masses. As the observable universe expands (because of better telescope
technology) all my previous arguments are confirmed...

None of these are, or ever have been, arguments against the BB model
because they don't present any *quantitative* argument that these things
cannot be observed in the BB model.

The gas to dust ratio of a galaxy is not a *quantitative* argument?

???

Numbers matter.

Yes.

Waving your hands
about and claiming that selected observations are consistent with your
preconceptions is not science.


Sorry but I can repeat the same sentence to you. Waving your hands at
the mounting evidence that we are seeing in the supposed "dark ages"
fully developed and ancient galaxies is not science.

But we can just wait a little bit. ALMA is just BEGINNING to be used. In
this year or the next we will find an even OLDER galaxy much FURTHER away.

In article ,
jacob navia wrote:
That's exactly what I said. The same level of dust.

So why do you think that's relevant? What calculation have you done
that suggests that the *gas to dust ratio* should be different in a
young galaxy and the MW? In the BB model both gas and dust will evolve
with time...

Looking this a little bit ore, I went to one of the many sites that
accept the BB Theory as true: The "James Webb Space Telescope" site of
NASA. There it says:

quote
Until around 400 million years after the Big Bang, the Universe was a
very dark place. There were no stars, and there were no galaxies.
end quote

I'm not really interested in defending random websites, which are
often written by and for journalists...

This would mean that our galaxy make all the stars and all that dust in
100 million years, supposing that the authors of the paper are right whe
they suppose that the galaxy was fully developed at z=9.

..... but that basically means that the star formation rate would have
to be about the same through the galaxy's lifetime as the measured
value (given the errors). So what's the problem?

quote
"After the CMB was released, the universe was still very different from
the one we live in today, and it took a long time until the first stars
were able to form," says Marco Bersanelli of Università degli Studi di
Milano, Italy. "Planck's observations of the CMB polarization now tell
us that these 'dark ages' ended some 550 million years after the Big
Bang -- more than 100 million years later than previously thought," he adds
end quote

That would mean that this galaxy couldn't exist because according to
observations it was fully formed (and with a lot of DUST!) 700 million
years after the supposed "bang". It would need to be fully formed in
only 150 million years

Of course it's not fully formed, where do you get that from? It is
about 1% of the mass of the Milky Way at z=0, and a small fraction of
the physical size. However, it only needs to form 10 solar masses a
year to reach that mass. Again, you are claiming that's a problem
without any evidence to support your claim.

What you calculate above is the rate needed to form the stars seen, but
the TOTAL number of stars created is MUCH higher since there must be a
lot of stars that were created, lived and died to make all that dust!

Not really -- the number of stars that have died to make the dust will
be a pretty small fraction of the total mass. Look up the concepts of
'initial mass function' and 'main sequence lifetime of stars'. This is
all elementary first-year astronomy that it's really useful to know
before setting up as a cosmologist!

The gas to dust ratio of a galaxy is not a *quantitative* argument?

No, because it's not an argument at all. Prove to me from first
principles that that gas to dust ratio cannot possibly be achieved in
1-3 hundred Myr and I'll agree you have a point. (But you can't.)

Sorry but I can repeat the same sentence to you. Waving your hands at
the mounting evidence that we are seeing in the supposed "dark ages"
fully developed and ancient galaxies is not science.

Again -- describing this galaxy as 'fully developed' is nonsense, and
you have no evidence at all that it's 'ancient'.

Martin
--
Martin Hardcastle
School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Please replace the xxx.xxx.xxx in the header with herts.ac.uk to mail me

On Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 9:51:32 AM UTC-5, Martin Hardcastle wrote:
In article ,
jacob navia wrote:
That's exactly what I said. The same level of dust.

So why do you think that's relevant? What calculation have you done
that suggests that the *gas to dust ratio* should be different in a
young galaxy and the MW? In the BB model both gas and dust will evolve
with time...

------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a direct, straightforward question that I would like to have answered.

What quantitative or unique qualitative empirical result would lead us
to think that there is a problem with our theoretical model of the
early period of expansion?

I presume that there are some limits to what the existing model could
account for. So what are these "lines in the sand" that do offer clear
and definitive tests of the model?

Le 04/03/2015 15:51, Martin Hardcastle a ecrit :
So why do you think that's relevant? What calculation have you done
that suggests that the*gas to dust ratio* should be different in a
young galaxy and the MW?

Mr Hardcastle:

A few lines above I said:

quote from my post
1) Dust production in galaxies is a cumulative process. The older the
galaxy, the more dust it has. This is because supernova explosions
produce the dust, as has been recently found.
end quote

Now, would you please answer to this instead of asking the questions I
have already answered?

Since dust is produced in supernova explosions, the longer a galaxy
lives, the more dust it has. This is also confirmed by the article I cited:

quote
Instead of a young, dust-poor galaxy, these measurements suggest an
evolved system. Finally, the deep upper limit on the C III]
1909Angstroms line, of 4 Angstroms restframe equivalent width is
unusual for line-emitting galaxies at these redshifts.

Based on galaxies at lower redshift, we might expect an equivalent width
as high as 30 Amstrongs for this star-formation rate for a young galaxy.

And while the lack of Ly-alpha emission in this galaxy could be
explained by IGM absorption, the absence of C III] emission cannot, and
is consistent with a more evolved galaxy.
end quote

AN EVOLVED SYSTEM within the "reionization" age according to BB theory.

Now please explain me this:

If the "dark ages" lasted 550 million years, as the Planck satellite
data suggest, how can we have an EVOLVED dusty galaxy 150 million years
later?

The data is relatively new. See
http://www.mpg.de/8950872/planck-star-formation (Feb 9th 2015)
That URL is the Max Planck institute in Germany. This is not "some web
site". It is the official web site of the Max Planck Institut that has
*some* insight into the data of the Max Planck Satellite, I suppose...

They refer to MANY scientific papers, and that is the problem, I can't
tell you which. But I am sure this will be no problem for professionals
really.


You say:

quote from Mr Hardcastle's message
Not really -- the number of stars that have died to make the dust will
be a pretty small fraction of the total mass. Look up the concepts of
'initial mass function' and 'main sequence lifetime of stars'. This is
all elementary first-year astronomy that it's really useful to know
before setting up as a cosmologist!
end quote

Thanks for the hint but I am NOT a cosmologist, I have a PhD in
biochemistry so I won't be a cosmologist any time soon :-)

But coming back to the discussion.

The 'initial mass function' just tells us essentially that there will be
less numbers of massive stars and more smaller stars. But I thought that
this would not apply to the very first stars/galaxies since all of them
should be very massive and die quickly to make all the dust and metals
necessary to explain the metallicity of the early galaxies that is observed!


You continue with this:
quote
Prove to me from first principles that that gas to dust ratio cannot
possibly be achieved in 1-3 hundred Myr and I'll agree you have a point
end quote

In the article we have this:
quote
This gives a dust-to-gas mass ratio of about 17 x 10 -3. And while the
uncertainty on the gas and dust masses is large -- approximately 0.5 dex,
dominated by the scatter in the Schmidt-Kennicutt law and the unknown
dust temperature, where the two values are linked through
the SFR -- the dust-to-gas mass ratio is nevertheless high for this
redshift, between a half and a few times the Milky Way value
end quote

The problem is not that I have to prove you that this dust to gas ratio
is impossible (obviously it is not since it is observed!). The problem
is for you to explain HOW this galaxy can achive in 150 million years
what the milky way needed 12 0000 million years to achieve!!!

Even if we take the lower figure (half the ratio of the MW) it would be
still 6000 million years, supposing a linear accumulation function.

You say:
quote
Again -- describing this galaxy as 'fully developed' is nonsense
end quote

In the cited paper we have:
quote
Instead of a young, dust-poor galaxy, these measurements suggest an
evolved system.
end quote

OK?
It is not me (again). It is the authors of that paper.

Mr Hardcastle:
Even if the tone of my messages is polemic, I thank you for your
answers, and I hope I did not upset you (and the other professionals
here) with my rumblings.

jacob

[Mod. note: non-ASCII characters removed again -- mjh]

In article ,
jacob navia writes:
http://www.eso.org/public/archives/r...8/eso1508a.pdf

This is an interesting paper, but because it's in _Nature_, not all
the information is given. In particular, it looks to me as though
the uncertainties on the physical quantities are underestimated, and
I don't see how the authors derive the expected equivalent width for
the C III] line. (It isn't in the reference cited.) A dust
temperature as low as 35 K also strikes me as unlikely; the CMBR
temperature is 23 K, after all. None of this changes the basic and
valuable result that there must be _some_ dust in the galaxy, and in
fact more of the galaxy's luminosity comes out in the rest-frame FIR
than in the UV.

There is a vast literature on processes that create and destroy
dust. Despite that, there are still large uncertainties about the
dust life cycle because the creation and destruction rates depend
critically on local environmental conditions and on the exact dust
composition. Also, dust _masses_ are notoriously hard to measure.
The age estimate for the stellar population of A1689-zD1 is 80 Myr,
and I see no reason why dust amounting to about 2% of the stellar
mass (by the authors' estimate; rather less by my estimate) cannot
have been created in that time.

As to A1689-zD1 contradicting the Big Bang, our present knowledge of
early galaxy formation and the progress of reionization is highly
uncertain. Better understanding of the early Universe is indeed a
prime objective of JWST. That said, a _rough_ picture of the timing
as presently understood is that the first galaxies might have formed
between redshift 11 and 20, substantial reionization (say 1% of the
volume ionized) begins around redshift 8 or lower, and reionization
is nearly finished (99% of the volume ionized) no later than redshift
5.5. Further data will refine or perhaps change these numbers, but
so far as I know, there are no existing data inconsistent with
them. As others have written, the new data on this galaxy are
consistent with these epochs.

Finally, what would it take to throw out the present Big Bang
picture? I can think of two obvious things: 1) an object at any
redshift older than the calculated age of the Universe at that
redshift, or 2) a microwave background temperature at any redshift
differing from (1+z)*2.7 K. (wlandsman mentioned #1.) Less obvious
but still sufficient would be failure to find any single set of
cosmological parameters consistent with all data. Of course such
contradicting observations would have to be confirmed and have low
uncertainties and systematic errors, not be simply 1- or 2-sigma
deviations or observations where the meaning is unclear. A couple of
decades ago, globular cluster ages were thought to constitute such a
problem, but _Hipparcos_ data showed the cluster distances were wrong
and therefore the ages were overestimated. As I wrote, at the moment
there's no problem despite considerable data.

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