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Age of Universe Nearly Twice As Old As Previously Believed (phys.org) 87

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Our universe could be twice as old as current estimates, according to a new study that challenges the dominant cosmological model and sheds new light on the so-called "impossible early galaxy problem." "Our newly-devised model stretches the galaxy formation time by a several billion years, making the universe 26.7 billion years old, and not 13.7 as previously estimated," says author Rajendra Gupta, adjunct professor of physics in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa.

For years, astronomers and physicists have calculated the age of our universe by measuring the time elapsed since the Big Bang and by studying the oldest stars based on the redshift of light coming from distant galaxies. In 2021, thanks to new techniques and advances in technology, the age of our universe was thus estimated at 13.797 billion years using the Lambda-CDM concordance model. However, many scientists have been puzzled by the existence of stars like the Methuselah that appear to be older than the estimated age of our universe and by the discovery of early galaxies in an advanced state of evolution made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope. These galaxies, existing a mere 300 million years or so after the Big Bang, appear to have a level of maturity and mass typically associated with billions of years of cosmic evolution. Furthermore, they're surprisingly small in size, adding another layer of mystery to the equation.

Zwicky's tired light theory proposes that the redshift of light from distant galaxies is due to the gradual loss of energy by photons over vast cosmic distances. However, it was seen to conflict with observations. Yet Gupta found that "by allowing this theory to coexist with the expanding universe, it becomes possible to reinterpret the redshift as a hybrid phenomenon, rather than purely due to expansion." In addition to Zwicky's tired light theory, Gupta introduces the idea of evolving "coupling constants," as hypothesized by Paul Dirac. Coupling constants are fundamental physical constants that govern the interactions between particles. According to Dirac, these constants might have varied over time. By allowing them to evolve, the timeframe for the formation of early galaxies observed by the Webb telescope at high redshifts can be extended from a few hundred million years to several billion years. This provides a more feasible explanation for the advanced level of development and mass observed in these ancient galaxies. The research has been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Age of Universe Nearly Twice As Old As Previously Believed More

Age of Universe Nearly Twice As Old As Previously Believed

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  • How many more times am I going to read a "universe older than previously believed" story?

    • Re:FFS this happens every year! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:35AM (#63687953)

      Until we get the margin of error down to a range that is more or less uninteresting, and we stop finding evidence that appears to disagree with the current models.

      (Note: this is NOT me suggesting that Rajendra Gupta isn't an embarrassing fucking quack who should be fired by UofO yesterday)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by geekmux ( 1040042 )

        Until we get the margin of error down to a range that is more or less uninteresting, and we stop finding evidence that appears to disagree with the current models.

        Previously the entire existence of humans was confined to a very small fraction of a single percent on the timeline of the galaxy. Can't wait to hear how a new margin of error is going to round that up to...a very small fraction of a single percent.

        Even the shittiest little star in the corner of the universe fading from existence, is wondering what could possibly justify that much narcissism.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 )

      How many more times am I going to read a "universe older than previously believed" story?

      For those who still don't quite grasp how selling hype and bullshit works in the year 2023, I believe this happens "every year" because you keep clicking on it.

    • I know, it seems like the universe is older every year!

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 )

      The lesson here is to understand that " Science " rarely gets it right on their first attempt.
      ( Or the second, third, etc. etc. )

      Remember this the next time someone tells you to " Follow / Trust the Science "

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        Generally, the science does become more closer to reality as our knowledge and measuring instruments evolves.
        I think this is paraphrasing Asimov.
        First it was thought the Earth was flat, then science said that was wrong, the Earth is a sphere. Then it was, no the Earth is actually not a sphere but an oblique sphere. Then it was, no, the Earth is not an oblique sphere as it is slightly pear shaped and therefore a pear shaped oblique sphere.
        Note the each change more accurately described the shape of the Earth

      • This is not one of those cases , its based on the "tired light" concept that was fundamentally disproven in the 1940s.

        Not only is it unlikely, it *cant* be true unless we want to roll back all physics (including the stuff that works) back to before einstein.

        Its just a guy who wrote a paper, not "science".

        • This seems to be the point where this conversation went off the rails. Yes, the headline is sensationalist and should be more like "one scientist's paper suggests...". But then everyone here starts dismissing a paper that they haven't read based on their own notions of orthodoxy, which isn't how science is supposed to work.

          If you read even the abstract at https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/... [doi.org] you'll see the paper finds a mathematical formulation that comports with several previously unexplainable new findings f

    • Re:FFS this happens every year! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @11:24AM (#63688285)

      You can pretty much ignore this one sight unseen.

      Its kook science. Its a paper by one guy Rajendra Gupta trying to rehash a very silly idea, Tired Light that proposed an alterenative to Red shift and relativity, that was thorouglhly disproven in the 1940s because its fundamntally contradicted by the observed behavior of light and the incontrovertial evidence that Zwicky was wrong and Einstein was right. Tens of Thousands of observations contradict this thing.

      Its bad science and I'm a bit shocked that phys.org ran with this one.

    • General relativity strikes again.

      The universe perceives itself to be one age while we as observers sees a different age.

      • Except this "paper" is based on the "tired light" pseudoscience that was disproven in the 1940s because it contradicted relativity.

        This is one guy writing a paper with some ideas that do NOT stand up to scrutiny, not "scientists discovered", and definately noot "releativity strikes again".

    • Religious idiots double down and say the world is only 3,000 years old, instead of the previous 6,000 years.

  • Jesus H Christ (Score:5, Informative)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:25AM (#63687941) Journal

    Tired light was debunked decades ago.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Fuck me, but science journalism is populated by fucking morons.

    • Worse, this is a coming from a university. At least it's from an adjunct professor... a part-timer hired to do what the full-timers would prefer not to be burdened with.

      Still, the University of Ottawa must be embarrassed to see their institution's name attached to this thoroughly discredited garbage, and I'd bet Rajendra Gupta will be rewarded for this by having that association ended.

      • String theory was pushed by Princeton for how many decades? No reason to single out UO for this kind of stuff.

        • Any otherwise credible educational institution should be mercilessly criticized for having its name attached to something so thoroughly debunked - unless, of course, it's accompanied by extraordinary proof.

          This is like seeing a neurology prof publish a paper announcing that phrenology was actually legitimate and explains why we don't know everything there is to know about dopamine. It's just hot garbage without a giant pile of proof and peer review to back it up... and it should never have been published (

      • Uh, what about Berkeley being stuck with certifiable nutcases like Peter Duesberg?

    • Thank you. I read the article, thought it was cool, then read your comment, was disappointed but then thanks to you I learned about the cool link between time dilatation, red shift and super nova, now I'm happy again https://physics.stackexchange.... [stackexchange.com]

  • Space, time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kipsate ( 314423 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:26AM (#63687945)
    Let's hypothesize that space and time are emergent properties of more fundamental physics.

    Time being emergent is defendable as for instance light does not experience any passage of time. There is no way to establish that in between two interactions, elementary particles experience any passage of time. All our knowledge of particles is necessarily based on behaviors caused by interactions.

    Space being emergent is also defendable. For instance, an electron is a point particle that does not have any volume. Again there is no way to establish the volume of elementary particles. All our knowledge is based on interactions. There's no way for us to know the properties of particles when they're not interacting with other particles.

    Given the emergent space / time hypothesis, it must follow that the properties of space, time and particles are constant over "time". A deeper physics determines these properties, but we cannot see because our knowledge is restrained by what we measure by interacting.

    • One could however possibly say that the volume of a particle is the universe. The particle field becomes apparent at certain points based on probability and interactions with other fields.

    • "Given the emergent space / time hypothesis, it must follow that the properties of space, time and particles are constant over "time"."

      Yes, I think so. But time isn't constant. The truth is humans have no way of knowing how the Universe formed or how big the universe is or any of that. We can only identify that which we can observe, which we find out every day is only part of the story.

      This is where religion comes in. It's how humans fill (or decide not to fill) the gaps in knowledge, however incorrectl

  • So like (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:29AM (#63687947)

    12054 years old instead of 6027 ?

    • Re:So like (Score:5, Funny)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @09:47AM (#63688033) Journal

      Blasphemer, god will smite thee and send thee to hell.

      Jesus love you.

    • Funny, speaking as a Christian who does not believe in the concept of a "young" universe you are alluding to.

      But in all seriousness, proposing that the universe is twice as old as previously thought, is just as upsetting and destabilizing to the study of astronomy, as your 12K years would be to Christians who hold to a 6,000 year old earth. There have been a whole lot of layers of hypothesizing built up over decades, based on the 13.7 byo universe. If this new observation turns out to be verified, a whole l

  • Hmm.. (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:31AM (#63687949)

    Tired light? So they trade one weird complexity/fancy parameter for another? I'm not sure that is very Occamy. The other thing is this physicist has been pushing the tired light/variable speed well before the JWST results. It doesn't mean it is wrong, but it could point to some kind of bias. Granted it's an ad hominem argument but I haven't read this latest paper .. though I do note some straw men in the abstract.

    • Tired light dates back to the 1930s as an alternative explanation for the Hubble red shift, a sort of last gasp of the steady state theory. Then Lemaitre published his solution for GR's field equations which demonstrated an expanding universe, and finally even Einstein conceded the point. The final nail in the coffin for alternative cosmological models came with the discovery of the CMBR in 1964 by Wilson and Penzias, but even by then the number of people who questioned Big Bang cosmology was shrinking.

      Tire

      • Do you have data consistent with multiple theories, but you select one by arbitrary social consensus, and enforce your fickle selection with ridicule and emotional shaming of heterodoxy?

        • What does any of this have to do with tired light being abandoned as an alternative to the Hubble expansion? It was rejected for sound theoretical and observational reasons. It was an attempt to explain away the Hubble Expansion, but Lemaitre's solutions for GR's field equations explained the expansion without asserting some property to light that no model predicted or observation even hinted at. It was abandoned because it was wrong, and then decades later resuscitated by pseudo-science fraudsters trying t

        • Observational data has disproved Tired Light from the start - even Zwicky admitted this.

          To lose energy, the photons would have to change their momentum - by definition. This would result in the photons no longer travelling straight lines from A to B. The observational result would be that the image of objects would be spread out by an amount dependant on their distance and/or quantity of intervening matter. In other words, distant galaxies would be blurry, and ones near other objects would be even blurrier.

          • "To lose energy, the photons would have to change their momentum - by definition. This would result in the photons no longer travelling straight lines from A to B. "

            Light commonly does not travel in straight lines from A to B. Every-day observation doesn't show this, but on a cosmic scale it happens all of the time (Gravitational Lensing.)

  • Thank you James Web Space Telescope (Score:3)

    by oumuamua ( 6173784 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:41AM (#63687957)
    Bringing new problems for astronomers to puzzle over. Now let's remember the faint of heart who wanted to CANCEL it:
    AAS Issues Statement on Proposed Cancellation of James Webb Space Telescope [aas.org]
    Proposed NASA Budget Bill Would Cancel James Webb Space Telescope [universetoday.com]

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 )

      Aka the usual suspects .. Republicans.

      • Selling space exploration is Republicans is super easy because space exploration provides:
        1. Dual purpose technologies. Q says its really a Defense program.
        2. This will bring good jobs to your state.
        3. You can deploy a cube sat that tracks libs, lizard people, and Hunter Biden.

  • But somehow you forgot to put that in your title. At least Phys.org qualifies it with "new research", although it insists on other critical-thinking errors (such as using the word "believes" for study results).

  • Indian adjunct professor, say no more (Score:3)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:50AM (#63687967)

    Amazing the amount of junk science and bad engineering comes out of India, trying to make a name for themselves.

    This garbage was utterly debunked decades ago, no actual astrophysicist or cosmologist believes it holds any shred of credibility in light of actual evidence.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Yeah, Bose, Raman, and Chandrasekhar, such hacks!

      Outlandish ideas can come from anywhere, and many whom hold such outlandish ideas won't let them go. But we only hear about them when the ideas are promoted, either by those well-meaning but not sufficiently educated, or by those who share the outlandish ideas, or by those looking to increase their own circulation of their science-for-the-masses publications through that controversy.

      • HAHA! you name people born over a century ago. I'm talking of the present, the volume of junk science and junk engineering from India *now* is nearly boundless. They need to vet who gets a microphone, it's out of control

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          "They need to vet who gets a microphone, it's out of control"

          Who's they?

          This is the story of our times. Vetting who gets the microphone is becoming the most important thing for all of us, yet we are totally unprepared for it.

          • there is this thing called "peer reviewed" science.

            This long debunked tired light theory got peer reviewed and trashed, decades ago as it should have been.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by TWX ( 665546 )

          And my point is that there's junk "science" out of everywhere .

          Hell, there's a senior tenured professor at MIT that has basically destroyed his own reputation by being an asshole when someone dared to question what he was teaching as gospel, someone with a master's degree managed to demonstrate that what this professor was claiming as some other force was just the test equipment itself introducing errors.

    • Debunked decades ago? That's not possible, because the discovery of these impossibly-large early galaxies only occurred after the James Web made the discovery possible.

  • ... it could just be that we don't know what we think we know, and that there isn't actually anything scientific about stuff we can't test.

  • Now the creationist morons are twice as wrong!

  • Please don't approximate 13.797 as 13.7.

  • Who is puzzled? (Score:3)

    by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Saturday July 15, 2023 @10:25AM (#63688125)

    However, many scientists have been puzzled by the existence of stars like the Methuselah that appear to be older than the estimated age of our universe

    From what I can tell, the general public is puzzled but astrophysicists have an explanation. [youtu.be] The estimated age of the star would be older than the universe if you did not factor the range of uncertainty in the estimation. With uncertainty, the star's age would be consistent with the age of the universe.

    • That's only one piece of the puzzle. James Web did indeed discover early galaxies that shouldn't be as mature as they are observed to be. We can't just brush that observation aside.

      • No one is brushing the new findings of JWST for early galaxies aside. The findings do need further confirmation; however, astrophysicists have long known about Methuselah. Saying they are baffled by it is like saying paleontologists are baffled by gaps in the fossil record.

        • I don't think your analogy is quite on point. Gaps don't necessarily conflict with existing observations. A better analogy would be saying that it's like paleontologists being "baffled" by evidence of humans eating dinosaurs or using them as work animals.

  • So much of it is based on vary long chains of reasoning and extreme extrapolation of limited evidence
    It feels like writing software without a debugger
    How can we prove that every step in a very long chain is accurate?
    How can we be sure that tiny errors or gaps in understanding don't grow into nonsense?

    • You don't. You allow many nonsensical ideas to develop in parallel, and you wait for the evidence which will let you rule them out.

      As is so often the case, the problem here isn't the science. The problem is the reporting. Although if the reporter had just said something like, "Cosmologist proposes that the age of the universe could be nearly twice as old as previously believed." it would have been fine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "We" cannot do any of these things. Experts can apply scientific techniques to test and refine "our" understanding over time. Precisely what happens.

      What "we" can do is understand the limits of scientific understanding and not panic when science adjusts its theories. And we can resist bad faith attempts to discredit knowledge at every turn. Nothing is lost to any of us if the age of the universe is not what "we" predicted it is, but a lot is lost when the ignorant rules because we lack sufficient confide

  • Ages don't have ages.

    Things have ages.

  • What they'll soon discover, is that the universe tends to experience regular "big bangs" within a region filled with shells made from the grossly-expanded remnants of previous "bangs". These will sterilize, if not utterly wipe out, the previous shell of gas and stars. And we're overdue for the next one, so it's probably already happened, but just not become visible yet.

  • Simple logic folks.

    1. "nothing" cannot "exist". "nothing" would be the opposite of anything existing, at all. It is a purely theoretical state.

    2. Even if "nothing" somehow could exist (a paradox), "something" still cannot come from "nothing".

    3. "something" exists. I know this because *I* exist. Cogitus, ergo sum.

    4. "The universe" is a word to mean the entirety of all that exists. (something, not nothing).

    5. matter only changes form. cause always precedes effect. There was always a past "somethin

    • Your hypothesis ignores entropy, which is always increasing. If this is true, and the universe has always existed, then entropy would have increased to an infinite degree by now, all matter would have degenerated into energy and dissipated long ago. This is referred to as the "heat death" of the universe. This is not reversible, leading to the conclusion that the universe had to have a very discrete beginning.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by danda ( 11343 )

        1. What is energy if not something?

        2. There are processes that decrease local entropy. Life is one such process. Stars and Galaxies may be another.

        3. Your "dismissal" ignores the very real problem: how could "nothing" ever turn into "something"?

        • Energy certainly is something. We know that matter and energy are different forms of the same thing, which is why we have the law of conservation of matter and energy. But the fact that energy is something, doesn't mean it can reorganize into matter, if entropy has played itself out to its ultimate conclusion.

          Yes, there are processes that decrease local entropy. But if you postulate that the universe has always existed, then "global" entropy eventually wins over every instance of the reversal of "local" ent

    • This is just a bunch of pseudo philosophical gobbledygook. Also:

      Unless you can clearly explain how "nothing" can exist, and how "nothing" can transform into "something"...

      The lack of completeness of current science doesn't mean that your bonkers "theory" is correct.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by danda ( 11343 )

        I did not propose a theory. Only simple logic.

        If you disagree with the logic, go ahead and refute it...

        • Logic is necessary but not sufficient. I can build an entirely logically self consistent system of mathematics around 2+2=1 (i.e. finite field arithmetic), but that does not have a relation to physical reality. All the theories of supersymmetry in physics are logically consistent but also have no apparent basis in reality.

          And the problem is that your supposedly logically consistent theory simply doesn't match observed reality.

          But more importantly your theory that's "only logic" which you didn't propose but

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by danda ( 11343 )

            okay, so show me the error.

            • You claim that the universe has existed forever. This could just be some silly wordplay around the definition of forever since before the universe doesn't make sense, therefore it has existed for all time, I.e. Forever, but under this that can also be finite. However you also said infinite and timeless so you appear to be referring to infinite age.

              If it's the former, then it's just pointless quibbling and of no consequence.

              The obvious error with the latter is that the second law of thermodynamics directly c

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by danda ( 11343 )

                Thanks. I will give your comment some thought.

                Meanwhile, let's see if I understand your position. I assume you believe in the big bang theory, yes? If so, you believe that *initially* there was a nearly infinitely dense ball of matter. It was surrounded by..... absolute nothingness .... somehow. At some instant, for unknown reasons, this infinitely dense "something" decided to explode and that explosion has been happening ever since. Furthermore, there is some kind of spherical wall around the edges

                • I assume you believe in the big bang theory, yes?

                  Well believe in, as in, the evidence makes it look like the most likely thing, yes.

                  If so, you believe that *initially* there was a nearly infinitely dense ball of matter. It was surrounded by..... absolute nothingness .... somehow.

                  It could have also been infinite, I suppose, and then all expanding at once.

                  Furthermore, there is some kind of spherical wall around the edges of "the universe" that separates it from the outer nothingness.

                  kiiiiinda, but it's not re

  • The more outrageous these claims get, the more I find solace and intrigue in the research surrounding plasma cosmology. Certainly worth the time.

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