Refuting Creationism - Merging Galaxies 12.8 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Artist's impression of the interacting galaxies observed in this research

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO),
T. Izumi et al

The interacting galaxies observed by the ALMA radio telescope at the Cosmic Dawn. This image shows the distribution of ionized carbon gas, which reflects the overall distribution and motion of interstellar matter. It is clearly visible that the two galaxies are interacting, and are connected by a structure between them. The two crosses in the image indicate the positions of the low-luminosity quasars discovered by the Subaru Telescope.

Dancing Galaxies Make a Monster at the Cosmic Dawn | NAOJ: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan - English

Creationists find the immensity of the Universe very difficult to force-fit into the creation myth in Genesis which describes it as a small flat planet with a dome over it, so they turn their putative creator god into an Almighty Liar by claiming it just made the Universe look old by placing all the photons to make it look like they started out tens of billions of years ago, when it created everything by magic just 10,000 years ago.

Strangely, they claim they can tell the Almighty Liar lied everywhere in the physical evidence that makes the Universe just look old, because they have a book in which it once told the truth!

Anyway, this is not the only contradictory belief they have to try to ignore, so they'll have no difficulty ignoring the evidence of a chaotic universe which they prefer to believe is perfectly ordered and designed with them in mind.

How can astronomers tell how far away remote objects are in the cosmos? Astronomers use several methods to determine the distances to remote objects in the cosmos, depending on how far away the object is. These methods can be categorized into a "cosmic distance ladder," with each step in the ladder applicable to different distance ranges. Here’s an overview of the main techniques:

1. Parallax
   • What it is: Parallax is the apparent shift in the position of a nearby star against the background of more distant stars as Earth orbits the Sun.
   • How it works: Astronomers measure the angle of this shift (called the parallax angle) from two points in Earth's orbit six months apart. The smaller the angle, the farther away the star is.
   • Applicable Range: This method is highly accurate for relatively close stars, up to about 1,600 light-years from Earth, but becomes less effective for more distant stars due to the tiny angles involved.
   
   
2. Standard Candles: Cepheid Variables and Type Ia Supernovae
   • Cepheid Variables:
     • What they are: Cepheid variables are stars that pulsate in brightness at regular intervals.
     • How they work: The period of pulsation is directly related to their intrinsic luminosity (true brightness). By observing the period, astronomers can calculate the star's absolute brightness and compare it to its apparent brightness (how bright it looks from Earth) to determine its distance.
     • Applicable Range: Cepheid variables are used to measure distances to objects within our galaxy and nearby galaxies, up to about 100 million light-years away.
   • Type Ia Supernovae:
     • What they are: Type Ia supernovae are explosions of white dwarf stars in binary systems.
     • How they work: These supernovae have a consistent peak luminosity (they explode with roughly the same intrinsic brightness). By comparing their apparent brightness to their known absolute brightness, astronomers can calculate their distance.
     • Applicable Range: This method is effective for measuring distances up to several billion light-years.
   
   
3. Tully-Fisher Relation
   • What it is: The Tully-Fisher relation is a correlation between the luminosity of a spiral galaxy and its rotation speed.
   • How it works: By measuring the galaxy's rotation speed using Doppler shift (changes in the wavelength of light due to motion), astronomers can estimate its luminosity. Comparing this with its apparent brightness gives its distance.
   • Applicable Range: Useful for distances up to about 200 million light-years.
   
   
4. Surface Brightness Fluctuations (SBF)
   • What it is: SBF measures the variations in brightness across a galaxy's surface due to the distribution of its stars.
   • How it works: Astronomers analyze these variations to estimate the galaxy's distance, using the known properties of stellar populations.
   • Applicable Range: Effective for distances up to about 100 million light-years.
   
   
5. Redshift and the Hubble Law
   • What it is: Redshift is the phenomenon where the light from distant galaxies shifts toward the red end of the spectrum due to the expansion of the Universe.
   • How it works: According to the Hubble Law, the greater the redshift, the farther away the galaxy is. By measuring the redshift, astronomers can estimate the distance of very distant galaxies.
   • Applicable Range: This method is primarily used for extremely distant galaxies, ranging from hundreds of millions to billions of light-years.
   
   
6. Gravitational Lensing
   • What it is: Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive object, like a galaxy or cluster of galaxies, bends the light from a more distant object behind it.
   • How it works: By analyzing the distortion of the background object's light, astronomers can determine the mass of the intervening object and estimate the distance to both the lensing object and the background object.
   • Applicable Range: This method is useful for studying very distant galaxies and clusters of galaxies.
   
   
7. Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB) Method
   • What it is: The TRGB method is based on the brightness of red giant stars at a specific evolutionary point.
   • How it works: The brightness of stars at the "tip" of the red giant branch is relatively constant for old star populations. By measuring the apparent brightness of these stars, astronomers can determine their distance.
   • Applicable Range: This method is effective for measuring distances within the Local Group and nearby galaxies, up to about 15 million light-years.
   
   
8. Gravitational Waves
   • What they are: Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime caused by violent events, such as the merger of black holes or neutron stars.
   • How they work: The strength and frequency of detected gravitational waves can be used to estimate the distance to the event that produced them.
   • Applicable Range: This is an emerging technique and can potentially measure distances over a wide range, from relatively nearby mergers to events occurring billions of light-years away.

Summary
Astronomers use a combination of methods to build a "distance ladder," starting with nearby objects measured by parallax and extending to the farthest galaxies through redshift. Each method relies on overlapping techniques to calibrate and cross-check distances, helping ensure the accuracy of cosmic measurements across vast scales.

The evidence comes in the form of the observation of galaxies merging 12.8 billion years before creationists believe the Universe was created. Like almost everything else about the history of the Universe, this happened in that immense pre-'Creation Week' period.

Astronomers know about it and when it happened because they can look back in time with powerful telescopes that can see the light that has taken 12.8 billion years to reach us, so what they are seeing happened 12.8 billion years ago.

This was discovered by an international team of astronomers led by Dr. Takuma Izumi of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, using the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) radio telescope to study the earliest known pair of close quasars. They were spotted by Yoshiki Matsuoka, at Ehime University in Japan, in images taken by the Subaru Telescope. The discovery is the subject of a research paper just published in The Astrophysical Journal and in a news release from the Subaru Telescope:

Dancing Galaxies Make a Monster at the Cosmic Dawn

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Detailed observations using the ALMA radio telescope of a pair of quasars discovered by the Subaru Telescope have revealed that these objects are ancestors of high-luminosity quasars, the brightest type of celestial bodies in the early Universe. This discovery provides significant insights into the evolution of galaxies and black holes in the early Universe.

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Observations have revealed that even in the early Universe high-luminosity quasars, supermassive black holes with masses exceeding a billion times that of the Sun, were already present within galaxies. It is also known that quasar host galaxies often undergo intense star formation. The most accepted theory suggests that the mergers of gas-rich galaxies trigger and sustain the rapid growth of both the central supermassive black holes and starburst activity. However, detecting these precursor galaxies and black holes before they become bright quasars has been challenging due to their faintness, hindering our understanding of galaxy/black hole formation in the early Universe.

To overcome this challenge, a research team led by Associate Professor Yoshiki Matsuoka of Ehime University analyzed large-scale survey data taken with the Subaru Telescope's Hyper Suprime-Cam, which boasts an extremely wide field of view. This survey, utilizing the Subaru Telescope's high light-gathering power, is significantly more sensitive than other large-scale surveys, enabling the detection of fainter objects. As a result, the team discovered a system where two very faint quasars (about 10 to 100 times fainter than high-luminosity quasars of the same era) were found side by side (Subaru Telescope June 17, 2024 Science Results). Located approximately 12.8 billion light-years away, corresponding to the "Cosmic Dawn" era when the Universe was only 900 million years old, this is the most distant record of such "pair quasars." Due to their faintness, these objects are thought to be in the pre-merger stage before the rapid growth of the supermassive black holes.

As a next step, a research team led by Associate Professor Takuma Izumi of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan conducted observations of the host galaxies of these pair quasars using the ALMA radio telescope. The results were astonishing.

When we first observed the interaction between these two galaxies, it was like watching a dance, with the black holes at their centers having started their growth. It was truly beautiful.

Dr. Takuma Izumi, lead author
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

The map of interstellar gas showed that the galaxies are linked by a "bridge" of gas and dust. This indicates that the two galaxies are in fact merging.

The team also found that the two galaxies are very rich in gas, suggesting that post-merger explosive star formation and fueling of the supermassive black holes should be easily triggered and sustained. These findings represent a significant achievement in identifying the ancestors of high-luminosity quasars—the brightest celestial objects in the early Universe—and starburst galaxies.

With the combined power of the Subaru Telescope and ALMA, we have begun to unveil the nature of the central engines (supermassive blackholes), as well as the gas in the host galaxies. However, the properties of the stars in the host galaxies remain unknown. By using the James Webb Space Telescope, we will be able to learn about the stellar properties of these objects. As these are the long-sought ancestors of high-luminosity quasars, which should serve as a precious cosmic laboratory, I hope to deepen our understanding of their nature and evolution through various observations in the future.

Dr. Takuma Izumi.

These results appeared as Izumi et al. "Merging Gas-rich Galaxies that Harbor Low-luminosity Twin Quasars at z = 6.05: A Promising Progenitor of the Most Luminous Quasars" in The Astrophysical Journal on August 29, 2024.

I've included the technical parts of this paper because the HTML coding was a challenge. Make of it what you will:

Abstract
We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array [C ii] 158 μm line and underlying far-IR continuum emission observations (0″̣57 × 0″̣46 resolution) toward a quasar–quasar pair system recently discovered at (𝓏 = 6.05). The quasar nuclei (C1 and C2) are faint (M₁₄₅₀ ≳ -23 mag), but we detect very bright [C ii] emission bridging the 12 kpc between the two objects and extending beyond them (total luminosity L_{[C ii]} ≃ 6 x 10⁹ L_⊙). The [C ii]-based total star formation rate of the system is ∼ 550 M_⊙ yr^-1 (the IR-based dust-obscured star formation is ∼ 100 M_⊙ yr^-1), with a [C ii]-based total gas mass of ∼ 10¹¹ M_⊙. The dynamical masses of the two galaxies are large (∼ 9 x 10¹⁰ M_⊙ for C1 and ∼ 5 x 10¹⁰ M_⊙ for C2). There is a smooth velocity gradient in [C ii], indicating that these quasars are a tidally interacting system. We identified a dynamically distinct, fast-[C ii] component around C1: detailed inspection of the line spectrum there reveals the presence of a broad-wing component, which we interpret as the indication of fast outflows with a velocity of ∼ 600 km s^-1. The expected mass-loading factor of the outflows, after accounting for multiphase gas, is ≳ 2 - 3, which is intermediate between AGN-driven and starburst-driven outflows. Hydrodynamic simulations in the literature predict that this pair will evolve to a luminous (M₁₄₅₀ ≲ -26 mag), starbursting (≳ 1000 M_⊙ yr^-1) quasar after coalescence, one of the most extreme populations in the early Universe.

1. Introduction
In the hierarchical structure formation scenario, galaxies undergo multiple mergers over cosmic time. Models show that mergers of gas-rich galaxies trigger intense star formation and fueling onto the central supermassive black holes (SMBHs), which appear as luminous quasars (e.g., Sanders et al. 1988; Di Matteo et al. 2005; Hopkins et al. 2006). Some theoretical models predict that subsequent feedback from the quasars, or active galactic nuclei (AGNs), plays a crucial role in driving the coevolution of SMBHs and host galaxies (King & Pounds 2015; Veilleux et al. 2020), leading to the observed tight correlation between the masses of SMBHs (MBH) and those of the host galaxy bulges observed in the local Universe (Kormendy & Ho 2013). Detections of galaxy-scale AGN-driven outflows in multiphase gas (e.g., Nesvadba et al. 2008; Aalto et al. 2012; Cicone et al. 2014), a higher AGN fraction in interacting/merging systems (e.g., Silverman et al. 2011; Goulding et al. 2018; Koss et al. 2018.1), and the global similarity in star formation and SMBH accretion histories over cosmic time (Madau & Dickinson 2014.1) support this scenario.

It is intriguing in this context that massive (∼ 10¹¹ M_⊙), quiescent, and old galaxies are already formed at 𝓏 ∼ 4 - 5 (e.g., Carnall et al. 2023; Valentino et al. 2023.1), suggesting that a phase of rapid growth of galaxies and SMBHs, and their associated feedback, had happened at even higher redshifts. Indeed, more than 400 quasars with rest-UV magnitude of M₁₄₅₀ < -22 mag are known at 𝓏 > 5.7 to date (Inayoshi et al. 2020.1; Fan et al. 2023.2), most of which have been identified by wide-field optical and near-IR surveys (e.g., Bañados et al. 2016; Jiang et al. 2016.1; Matsuoka et al. 2016.2, 2018.2a, 2018.3b). Sub/millimeter observations of the rest-frame far-IR (FIR) continuum and C^{+ 2} P_3/2 → ² P_1/2 157.74 μm line ([C ii] 158 μm) emission—the latter being one of the prime coolants of the cold interstellar medium (ISM; Wolfire et al. 2022)—toward optically luminous quasars (M₁₄₅₀ ≲ -26 mag by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have revealed that vigorous starbursts (star formation rate, SFR ≳ 100 - 1000 M_⊙ yr^-1) and huge amounts of dust (∼10⁸ M_⊙) and gas (∼10¹⁰ M_⊙) are usually associated with these quasars (e.g., Wang et al. 2013.1; Venemans et al. 2016.3, 2020.2; Decarli et al. 2022.1). Although the prevalence of massive AGN-driven outflows remains unclear from observations of the neutral ISM (Bischetti et al. 2019; Novak et al. 2020.3; Salak et al. 2024), fast ionized outflows (probed by, e.g., [O iii] 5007 Å) are frequently seen in 𝓏 > 6 quasars with recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations (e.g., Marshall et al. 2023.4; Yang et al. 2023.5; Yue et al. 2024.1; Loiacono et al. 2024.2).

While multiwavelength observations of quasars have progressed significantly in recent years, understanding of their progenitors lags behind. Some limited studies on partially dust-obscured quasars (Fujimoto et al. 2022.2) and starburst galaxies (Riechers et al. 2013.2; Marrone et al. 2018.4; Zavala et al. 2018.5), both of which may represent earlier evolutionary phases than the UV-bright quasar phase, indeed have revealed very rapid mass assembly in these systems at 𝓏 > 6 - 7. Closely interacting galaxies are considered to be an earlier evolutionary stage than these, yet there are very few examples known to host SMBHs at 𝓏 ≳ 6 (Yue et al. 2021, 2023.6). For example, Neeleman et al. (2019.1) studied five pairs of quasar host–companion galaxies at [C ii] and identified evidence of tidal interaction in three of them. Some other works have also found companion galaxies around quasars at 𝓏 > 5 - 6 (e.g., Decarli et al. 2017; Venemans et al. 2020.2). Decarli et al. (2019.2) performed high-resolution [C ii] and FIR continuum observations of another quasar–galaxy pair PJ308−21 at 𝓏 = 6.23 that hosts an SMBH of ∼ 3 x 10⁹ M_⊙ (Loiacono et al. 2024.2), revealing a large amount of cold ISM and the highly interacting nature of the system (two companions with projected distances of ∼ 5 and ≳ 10 kpc, respectively).

However, the interacting quasars targeted in the above papers are intrinsically as luminous as those of the other, isolated luminous quasars at 𝓏 > 6 such as those discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS), suggesting that the phase of active galaxy interaction had already happened. On the other hand, hydrodynamic simulations of mergers of galaxies predict that both SFR and quasar luminosity increase by orders of magnitude when gas-rich galaxies merge (e.g., Hopkins et al. 2006). Thus, progenitors in the earlier interaction phase, which will evolve to the luminous quasars currently observed, are anticipated to be much fainter. Wide-field optical deep imaging surveys, such as the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Strategic Survey (Aihara et al. 2018.6), are useful to search for such faint objects. Indeed, we have established a multiwavelength follow-up consortium for 𝓏 ≳ 6 quasars discovered by the HSC survey, the Subaru High-z Exploration of Low-Luminosity Quasars (e.g., Matsuoka et al. 2016.2, 2018.2a, 2018.3b, 2019.3, 2022.3), and so far discovered >150 low-luminosity quasars down to M₁₄₅₀ ∼ −22 mag at 𝓏 > 6.

Takuma Izumi et al 2024
Merging Gas-rich Galaxies That Harbor Low-luminosity Twin Quasars at 𝓏 = 6.05: A Promising Progenitor of the Most Luminous Quasars ApJ 972 116 DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ad57c6

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by IOP Publishing. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Cataclysmic events soon after the Big Bang, and evidence of a very old Universe, are probably not what parochial creationists want to hear about as they try to reassure themselves that a magic creator created a perfect Universe just for them just a few thousand years ago, and for some reason forged the evidence to make it look like the claims in a book written by Bronze Age pastoralist got it all wrong.

But here it is anyway - just another casual refutation of creationism by science and more scientific evidence of how badly the authors of the Bible got it all wrong.

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