Galaxies have kept in shape for 11 billion years

[pantheory]

“What surprised scientists when they looked billions of years back in time at more distant galaxies was that the sequence that we know today was much the same as far back as 11 billion years ago.”

 

"The galaxies look remarkably mature, which is not predicted by galaxy formation models to be the case that early on in the history of the Universe."

 

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/16/hubble-galaxy-shapes

 

Of course this is what has always been predicted by most every other cosmological model other than the Big Bang model – that the universe is either much older, or infinite in its age. But it seems that observations continue to surprise BB theorists and most astronomers.

 

“More massive galaxies like the Milky Way were rarer in the early Universe so that not enough could be sampled to describe properly their characteristics.”

 

The quote immediately above was not from the original paper but I expect it reflects a similar statement in the original paper. Since we can observe the largest of distant galaxies better than the smaller ones, I suspect this statement will in time be contradicted by other studies. If not and there really is a difference between the farthest distant galaxies form the close by ones, then other cosmological models would need to explain why.

There have been many studies and papers that assert that the distant universe was different from the present universe. One of the problems with many of these studies was that observations were based upon cosmic lensing whereby there is broad latitude of possible interpretations. This present study is based upon fewer of such lensed galaxies so that it could be less biased concerning interpretations. After the James Webb is up and running, as well as many VLBI and other radio/ infrared scopes are fully online, I think the answers will become much clearer.

 

[Ophiolite]

Hello pantheory/forest. My response is the same as it was when you posted this in another place.

Well, it is interesting, but some points of clarification may be helpful.

First, as background, the use of sequence in Hubble sequence, remains troubling. It still misleads people into thinking it represents an evolutionary pathway for galaxies, rather than being a series of galactic shapes related by morphogical similarity, not a succession of different ages.

Also, as an aside, the article is misleading in that it says the study is the result of studying CANDEL data from Hubble, whereas the paper makes clear the source of the data includes Hubble, but also the VLT (Very Large Telescope), CFHT (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope), Spitzer and Chandra data sets.

The article's conclusions and short quotes from the lead author appear to conflict with the conclusions in the paper, or certainly pantheory's conclusions conflict with the paper's conclusions. Pantheory appears to argue that the research shows no meaningful difference between much younger galaxies in the past and those closer, older galaxies we view today. This is a faulty view.

Specifically, the paper begins by noting several studies that have established evolution of galaxies over time. These include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

• Bell, E. F., Wolf, C., Meisenheimer, K., et al., 2004, ApJ, 608, 752
• Pozzetti, L., Bolzonella, M., Zucca, E., et al., 2010, A&A, 523, 13
• Faber, S. M., Willmer, C. N. A., Wolf, C., et al., 2007, ApJ, 665, 265
• Arnouts, S., Walcher, C. J., Le F`evre, O., et al., 2007, A&A, 476, 137
• Marchesini, D., Van Dokkum, P. G., F¨orster-Schreiber, N. M., 2009, et al., ApJ, 701, 1765
• Ilbert, O., Salvato, M., Le Floc’h, E., et al. 2010, ApJ, 709, 644
• Brammer, G. B., Whitaker, K. E., van Dokkum, P. G., et al., 2011, ApJ, 739, 24
• Daddi, E., et al. 2005, ApJ, 626, 680
• Cimatti, A., Cassata, P., Pozzetti, L., et al. 2008, A&A, 482, 21

Then, using the data sets referred to earlier, the authors make these observations that indicate differences between different ages of galaxy.

• We find that at 1 < z < 3 the passively evolving ETGs are the reddest and most massive objects in the Universe. This implies that an embryo of the Hubble Sequence, in the sense of a correlation between morphology, mass, color and star–formation activity of galaxies, is already in place at z ~ 3.
• We measure a significant evolution of the mass–size relation of ETGs from z ∼ 3 to z ∼ 1, with the average size of galaxies increasing by roughly a factor of ∼2 over this redshift interval, corresponding to 3 Gyrs of cosmic time.
• We witness the build up of the most massive ETGs, with their number density increasing by 50 times between z ∼ 3 and z ∼ 1.

In short, pantheory has either misinterpreted the study, been mislead by the lightweight article, or is cherry picking comments (not the actual report of the research) to support his view that the Big Bang did not occur. In fact, the paper adds further support to BB theory by confirming evolutionary trends within galaxies.

If you wish to confirm this for yourself you may find the original paper here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1303.2689.pdf

[pantheory]

Ophiolite,

I think both points of view were expressed by my quotes. They were surprised by the appearance of some galaxies but not by the sparcity of large galaxies like the Milky Way.

 

With all the new scopes coming online, as well as the James Webb going up, I expect it will not take that long to find out which perspectives or assertions will prevail concerning distant galaxies, maybe involving the future of cosmology.

Edited August 17, 2013 by pantheory