a-cosmology-group/acg#367

@luisenrique-arch I’m not sure what kind of studies you’ve been reading that would lead you to think things are all fine in the LCDM camp. The problem of the ‘impossible large galaxies’ is as big as ever. They are hustling to find explanations for it, but nothing good has come out so far.

You did not mention specific papers to support the idea that metallicity is low in those galaxies. From my general reading of JWST studies, it seems that O, H2O and other molecules are there. I think we need some more hard evidence here to discuss this metallicity problem further.

As for the low metallicity in distant galaxies, it’s not true that I didn’t cite any studies about it. In my original post, I linked a paper by Mirko Curti from the European Southern Observatory, which goes into detail about the methods astronomers use to estimate the amount of heavy elements in distant galaxies.

And yes, it’s definitely true that the James Webb Space Telescope has observed extremely distant galaxies showing surprisingly high levels of heavy elements in situations where, according to the standard model, they arguably shouldn’t already exist in such abundance. I’ve never denied that. But if we go by Curti’s paper, the majority of the distant galaxies observed still show lower metallicities compared to the galaxies we see nearby. The paper even explicitly states that metallicity generally decreases as redshift increases.

As for the standard model, I never claimed to have read studies saying that it’s doing well. I simply said that I’ve repeatedly seen people online claiming that some of the extremely massive and extremely distant galaxies observed by the JWST later turned out, after more careful analysis, to be closer and less massive than initially believed. As I said earlier, I don’t know whether this claim is actually true, because I haven’t gone looking for papers specifically about this issue. But it’s an argument I’ve seen repeated many times online by people who support the standard model.

Please, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t open this thread to be provocative; I’m asking all these questions precisely because I’m personally not satisfied with the standard model and I find static and eternal models more appealing (in my original post, I even cited David Crawford’s Curvature Cosmology as “the cosmology I’m currently most drawn to”). I brought up these questions because I’ve come across certain observations that don’t seem to fit very neatly with static models. So I’m genuinely trying to understand whether there are possible explanations or ways to reconcile these issues, precisely because I’d actually like those models to hold up.

some of the more sensational observations from 2022 and 2023 seem to have been toned down over time - @luisenrique-arch

Toned down by ΛCDM supporters by inventing new excuses (or ‘epicycles’, or ad-hoc hypotheses, etc.) to explain them. The observations by JWST have all been falsifying the Big Bang model, regardless of what ΛCDM-supporters are saying.

I linked a paper by Mirko Curti from the European Southern Observatory, which goes into detail about the methods astronomers use to estimate the amount of heavy elements in distant galaxies. - @luisenrique-arch

As @ExpEarth mentioned, the paper you give is only about measuring metallicities. The graph they show is from an older paper. I reproduce below the graph from the original paper.

I added a red line showing no evolution with redshift. Nine data points fall within the region allowed by their uncertainties. Compare this with only three points that agree with the “expected metals” evolution in ΛCDM shown by the blue line.

Now @luisenrique-arch, you tell me: is there evolution of the metallicity with redshift or not? Thanks for another example that falsifies ΛCDM.

Thanks for the follow-up and for taking the time to reply.

Toned down by ΛCDM supporters by inventing new excuses (or ‘epicycles’, or ad-hoc hypotheses, etc.) to explain them. The observations by JWST have all been falsifying the Big Bang model, regardless of what ΛCDM-supporters are saying.

On this point, I can’t really disagree with you. It’s true that the standard model constantly introduces new parameters and adjustments in order to preserve the theory. However, when I said that some of the galaxies initially considered “impossible” were later brought back into compatibility with the model, I wasn’t referring to the usual fallback argument that “the Big Bang itself hasn’t been challenged, only our models of galaxy and star formation need revision.”

That’s not what I meant.

What I was referring to is something more specific: in a few cases involving galaxies observed by the James Webb, the first analyses seemed to indicate extremely high redshifts, implying that these galaxies existed incredibly early in cosmic history and therefore appeared far too evolved for the standard model to comfortably explain. But after more detailed follow-up analyses, some of those redshift estimates were revised downward. In other words, some of the galaxies turned out to be closer than initially believed, and therefore had significantly more time to form and evolve within the framework of standard cosmology.

As I said in my other comments, this is a claim I’ve seen repeated online by some supporters of the standard model, but I don’t actually know whether it’s true, because I haven’t personally took the time to verify it.

Now @luisenrique-arch, you tell me: is there evolution of the metallicity with redshift or not?

If you look at stellar metals (the purple stars in the graph), they clearly increase as we approach redshift zero and are nearly absent at higher redshifts. This matters, because stellar metals are the most important. In a static and eternal universe, the stellar metal density should remain constant. There should be no general evolution of the galaxy population; distant galaxies should look essentially the same as those nearby. We should see the same amount of stellar metals regardless of distance, yet the graph shows a distinct evolutionary trend. The same trend is visible in the hot gas (the orange triangles), which also show a significant increase toward the present day.

I’m also a noob cosmologist so read with care .. Stellar metals are mostly nearby measurement - within the Milky Way and e.g. M31(Andromeda), NGC 4258. These measurements mostly just add to one side of the Hubble tension argument (local), and I don’t know if these nearby readings can also give a solid argument for an expanding cosmos. Reason is we cannot successfully resolve individual stars in distant galaxies and therefore cannot measure the metals in individual stars in ‘distant’ galaxies. EDIT: This doesn’t mean ‘it’s not there’. Therefore, the next rungs read metallicity in whole galaxies. There may be other reasons too, why we cannot resolve ALL metals in ‘nearby galaxies’, or end up with distorted readings that just appear to be lower-metal-by-distance.

I’m also a noob cosmologist so read with care .. Stellar metals are mostly nearby measurement - within the Milky Way and e.g. M31(Andromeda), NGC 4258. These measurements mostly just add to one side of the Hubble tension argument (local), and I don’t know if these nearby readings can also give a solid argument for an expanding cosmos. Reason is we cannot successfully resolve individual stars in distant galaxies and therefore cannot measure the metals in individual stars in ‘distant’ galaxies. EDIT: This doesn’t mean ‘it’s not there’. Therefore, the next rungs read metallicity in whole galaxies. There may be other reasons too, why we cannot resolve ALL metals in ‘nearby galaxies’, or end up with distorted readings that just appear to be lower-metal-by-distance.

Indeed, individual stars inside extremely distant galaxies can’t be resolved. But spectroscopy still allows astronomers to study the chemical composition of those galaxies, because the combined light of billions of stars and gas clouds carries spectral fingerprints of the elements present within them.

When light passes through gas, or is emitted by hot gas, specific elements interact with very precise wavelengths. Oxygen, iron, magnesium, calcium, carbon and other heavy elements each produce unique spectral lines. A spectrograph spreads the incoming light into a spectrum, and astronomers look for those characteristic patterns. Even though the galaxy appears as a tiny unresolved smudge, the spectrum still contains information about its chemistry because all the light is blended together rather than lost.

I’m precisely looking for some kind of mechanism capable of suppressing, absorbing or somehow hiding the absorption and emission lines of heavy elements across extremely large cosmological distances. I like the idea of a static and eternal universe without cosmic evolution, so I want to know if there’s a physical process that could make distant galaxies appear chemically primitive while not actually being primitive. It’s the reason I opened the thread in the first place.

I’m precisely looking for some kind of mechanism capable of suppressing, absorbing or somehow hiding the absorption and emission lines…

There is no such mechanism. The error is made in the analysis of galaxy brightness. Astronomers use the “fundamental plane” empirical relation to correct galaxy colour. From that they correct the spectroscopic analysis which is used to infer metallicity. But galaxy brightness in non-expanding space is not the same as the ΛCDM expected brightness, and this throws off their analysis to produce wrong numbers.

@RedshiftDrift

There is no such mechanism. The error is made in the analysis of galaxy brightness. Astronomers use the “fundamental plane” empirical relation to correct galaxy colour. From that they correct the spectroscopic analysis which is used to infer metallicity. But galaxy brightness in non-expanding space is not the same as the ΛCDM expected brightness, and this throws off their analysis to produce wrong numbers.

That’s interesting! Could you elaborate further?

Edit: The Wikipedia page you linked only talks about elliptical galaxies.

The relation between three properties of galaxies: 1) size, 2) surface brightness, and 3) velocity dispersion is called “the fundamental plane.” (If you plot it in 3D, the elliptical galaxies are concentrated near a plane.) Such a relation also exists for spiral galaxies (often discussed in the context of the Tully-Fisher relation). This relation has been measured for nearby galaxies and is well established.

There are also correlations between the fundamental plane and stellar mass, age, concentration, shape, and metallicity. In other words, the metallicity can be better estimated by removing a bias derived from properties 1, 2, and 3 of galaxies.

The problem is, galaxy size (property 1) is incorrectly derived because of the assumption of expanding space. Galaxies are estimated to be $(1+z)$ smaller than they really are, where $z$ is their redshift. (That’s why JWST observed galaxies are thought to be small. Astronomers think they are baby galaxies in the early universe. In reality, they are of average size like the nearby galaxies.) Also, surface brightness (property 2) is incorrectly derived because of the assumption of expanding space. They are estimated to be $(1+z)^3$ brighter than they really are. (That’s why JWST observed galaxies are thought to be bright. In reality, they have the same brightness as nearby galaxies.)

A consequence of these incorrectly-scaled properties, the analysis also produces a fictitious dependence on redshift of the metallicity.

@RedshiftDrift

Thanks for the thorough explanation! What you said makes a lot of sense to me. It explains why papers focused on exploring static models always discuss surface brightness but never mention metallicity. If metallicity is derived from surface brightness, then it makes sense that by discussing the first, you’re implicitly discussing the latter.

However, I have another question. If what you said is true, does that mean that the Little Red Dots observed by JWST are normal galaxies whose nature is simply being misinterpreted? From what Wikipedia says, they’re commonly believed to be active galactic nuclei because they have certain emissions that are typical of AGNs.

@RedshiftDrift

The problem is, galaxy size (property 1) is incorrectly derived because of the assumption of expanding space. Galaxies are estimated to be ( 1 + z ) smaller than they really are, where z is their redshift.

I’m not sure what you mean. Do you mean that the error is made. for instance, by using an assumption about angular distance in the LCDM model or that they assume galaxies to expand in the same way as the universe does in that model? I don’t think the latter expansion is generally assumed. There have been studies showing local expansions in numerous systems, however, such as planetary orbits, the AU, galaxies and supermassive black holes. For the black holes they call it ‘cosmological coupling’. It seems to me that if galaxies were increasing in size in this manner that many of the tests would become useless.

@luisenrique-arch I don’t know exactly what Little red Dots (LRDs) are. However, I agree with you that there is a way to “interpret them as normal galaxies whose nature is simply being misinterpreted.”

In the STz framework, an additional redshift is also caused by atomic hydrogen. But that effect is not as “clean” as the redshift caused by electrons. The hydrogen version of STz (H-STz) causes large redshifts ($z = 0.25$) in one step due to the energy levels in hydrogen (see the papers by Jacques Moret-Bailly which explain how hydrogen redshift explain Karlsson’s formula). This effect modifies the spectra in complicated ways by making a copy of the spectrum shifted by a large redshift (which I haven’t calculated yet, it’s a completely different research programme…)

If LRDs are similar to AGNs, then they have a Lyman-alpha forest which confirms the presence of hydrogen interacting with light, and therefore we could expect H-STz to occur.

For now, I consider LRDs as normal galaxies with a redshift four times the estimated redshift by astronomers (we observe the Lyman break but astronomer analyze that as if it were a Balmer break, so a galaxy thought to be at $z = 7$ is actually at $z = 28$).

@ExpEarth

Do you mean that the error is made. for instance, by using an assumption about angular distance in the LCDM model or that they assume galaxies to expand in the same way as the universe does in that model?

I am saying that the LCDM angular distance equation gives a distance that is $\approx (1+z)$ times smaller than the static-cosmology equation.

As you say, nobody assumes that galaxies expand due to space expansion. Both LCDM and Static agree that galaxies get larger with time by accumulating gas and merging with other galaxies.

There is however a difference between BB and Static in observations of the average galactic size of a population.

In the Big Bang framework, galaxies are born at the Big Bang and all grow in size together. If we look at the average size of a population of galaxies 2 billion years after the BB, this will be larger than their average size 1 billion years after the BB. This is because galaxy growth was triggered by the BB.

In the Static framework, galaxies are born independently from each other. Therefore, the mature ones die and new small galaxies are born to replace them. The average size of a population of galaxies at redshift $z=1$ (9 billion years ago) will be the same at $z=3$ (18 billion years ago). So while galaxies individually increase in size with time, the average galactic size of a population does not increase. The angular distance is therefore only determined by the geometry of space which is flat and non-expanding (Euclidean), as confirmed by Lovyagin et al.