Over the last few years, I have been thinking a ton about this style of article. They are riddled with phrases like “this shouldn’t be possible”, “breaks the laws of physics”, “it’s an impossible structure”, or something along those lines.
While these phrases are partially click-bait and partially awe inspiring, I am starting to think that the approach we are taking for estimating the massive scale of things in the universe may be extremely flawed.
I don’t claim to be a physicist or anything like that and am just your average internet idiot. However, it seems to me that working these problems in reverse might help. Our existing observations of the universe just seem to always put artificial caps on some problems, s’all.
So, let’s take the most massive black hole we know of and then multiply it’s mass by say, a few million times. Immediately, there will be a barrage of people who would post a million (probably legitimate) counter points as to why that wouldn’t even be possible to begin with.
It seems that given enough time, we eventually find some “impossible” things.
While it’s easy so get lost in constraints like the possible age of the universe, likely theories of early black hole formation, etc… It seems that Occam’s Razor might be getting lost somewhere. I mean, even with all of our existing data that says otherwise, there is that thing that was impossible. It’s right there! What would it take to form that thing even if the conditions seem absurd?
This has kind of been the expectation of JWST and why it was so anticipated and is so exciting. The whole point is to collect new data that challenges our understanding and learn new things.
These articles are usually written in a highly sensationalized way. Our understanding of what “should be possible” is based on computer models/simulations. These new, hard to explain observations have taught us that our models were not detailed or precise enough, or need to have parameters adjusted to accurately reproduce them, without needing to break our theories of the big bang and an expanding universe. We don’t even need to throw out the old models, because they are still useful and great for modeling most of the universe, just understand that there are limitations for using them to model the very early universe
There are definitely big mysteries yet to be explained and a lot to learn and figure out. The Hubble Tension comes to mind, and that one does make me a bit suspicious that something isn’t quite right.
Don’t read too much into articles like this using hyperbolic phrases. It’s not impossible. It doesn’t break the laws of physics. Our understanding of physics is just imperfect and gets refined as we gather new data.
So when a new instrument like JWST can see more stuff than we’ve ever seen before, of course we’re going to see some new wild shit. That’s the entire reason they made it.
Yeah, too many people seem to think that if we can’t predict it with out models then it can’t be possible. The truth is that models are never going to be perfect, and we’ll never be able to fully predict everything, and we’ll always be the ones that modify our models to match reality.
I chalk it up to human hubris that some people think it’s anything other than that.
