This article is best read on a laptop, desktop or tablet
This image shows the motion of cold gas in the REBELS-25 galaxy as seen with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Blue colouring indicates movement towards Earth and red indicates movement away from Earth, with a darker shade representing faster movement. In this case, the red-blue divide of the image shows clearly that the object is rotating, making REBELS-25 the most distant rotating disc galaxy ever discovered.
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/L. Rowland et al.
It looks like it's the turn of cosmologists to casually refute creationism by revealing the facts - normally the privilege of biologists and archaeologists who do so with almost every science paper they publish. But of course it would also be difficult for cosmologists to reveal anything about the cosmos that doesn't make those who described it as consisting of a small flat planet with a dome over it, look like anything other than ignorant simpletons who can't be taken seriously.
But of course, they were probably expert at being cattle-herding pastoralists, quite familiar with their few square miles of the Bronze Age Middle East; they just didn't know anything about science or history, so made up tales to fill the gap in their understanding.
Here for example is another cosmology paper showing just how old, immense and awe-inspiring the real Universe is, by reporting the discovery of a stable, rotating disc galaxy, rather like our own Milky Way galaxy, but from just 700 million years after the Big Bang. As such, REBEL-25 is the most distant rotating disc galaxy yet discovered. The discovery was made by an international team of astronomers led by cosmologists from Leiden University, The Netherlands, using data from the European Southern Observatory, Chile.
They have just published their findings in Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society and announced it in a press release from the European Southern Observatory:
REBELS-25 is a significant discovery as one of the most distant rotating disk galaxies observed to date. Situated at a redshift of 7.31, it formed roughly 13 billion years ago, during the early stages of the universe. This galaxy challenges current models of galaxy formation because it shows an unusually well-organized structure, similar to that of the Milky Way, with a rotating disk, potential spiral arms, and even a central bar-like feature. Typically, galaxies from this early epoch are expected to be smaller and more chaotic in appearance.
REBELS-25 is notable for its size and rapid star formation, producing stars at a rate of about 199 solar masses per year. It has a total stellar mass of around 8 billion solar masses and a gas mass likely over 100 billion solar masses, though obscuration by dust complicates this measurement. The galaxy also displays low velocity dispersion, making it a dynamically cold disk, but with signs of inflows, outflows, or even minor merging activity.
This discovery is reshaping our understanding of how quickly galaxies can organize into stable rotating systems shortly after the Big Bang, suggesting that such structures may have been more common in the early universe than previously thought [1,2,3]
Space oddity: Most distant rotating disc galaxy foundAlthough published open access, the body of the paper is in PDF format, so I only have the abstract for creationists to dispute. For those who consider themselves qualified to tell professional cosmologists that they've got it all wrong, this should present little difficulty:
Researchers have discovered the most distant Milky-Way-like galaxy yet observed. Dubbed REBELS-25, this disc galaxy seems as orderly as present-day galaxies, but we see it as it was when the Universe was only 700 million years old. This is surprising since, according to our current understanding of galaxy formation, such early galaxies are expected to appear more chaotic. The rotation and structure of REBELS-25 were revealed using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner.
The galaxies we see today have come a long way from their chaotic, clumpy counterparts that astronomers typically observe in the early Universe.
According to our understanding of galaxy formation, we expect most early galaxies to be small and messy looking.
Jacqueline Hodge, co-author
Leiden Observatory
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
These messy, early galaxies merge with each other and then evolve into smoother shapes at an incredibly slow pace. Current theories suggest that, for a galaxy to be as orderly as our own Milky Way — a rotating disc with tidy structures like spiral arms — billions of years of evolution must have elapsed. The detection of REBELS-25, however, challenges that timescale.
In the study, accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers found REBELS-25 to be the most distant strongly rotating disc galaxy ever discovered. The light reaching us from this galaxy was emitted when the Universe was only 700 million years old — a mere five percent of its current age (13.8 billion) — making REBELS-25’s orderly rotation unexpected.
Seeing a galaxy with such similarities to our own Milky Way, that is strongly rotation-dominated, challenges our understanding of how quickly galaxies in the early Universe evolve into the orderly galaxies of today's cosmos.
Lucie E. Rowland, first author
Leiden Observatory
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
REBELS-25 was initially detected in previous observations by the same team, also conducted with ALMA, which is located in Chile’s Atacama Desert. At the time, it was an exciting discovery, showing hints of rotation, but the resolution of the data was not fine enough to be sure. To properly discern the structure and motion of the galaxy, the team performed follow-up observations with ALMA at a higher resolution, which confirmed its record-breaking nature.
ALMA is the only telescope in existence with the sensitivity and resolution to achieve this.
Renske Smit, co-author
Astrophysics Research Institute
Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK.
Surprisingly, the data also hinted at more developed features similar to those of the Milky Way, like a central elongated bar, and even spiral arms, although more observations will be needed to confirm this.
Finding further evidence of more evolved structures would be an exciting discovery, as it would be the most distant galaxy with such structures observed to date.
Lucie E. Rowland.
These future observations of REBELS-25, alongside other discoveries of early rotating galaxies, will potentially transform our understanding of early galaxy formation, and the evolution of the Universe as a whole.
Publication:REBELS-25: Discovery of a dynamically cold disc galaxy at z=7.31The observations were conducted as part of the ALMA Large Program REBELS: Reionization Era Bright Emission Lines Survey.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
AbstractFor those not so qualified, here is an Ai-generated plain English translation of this abstract:
We present high resolution (∼0.14” = 710 pc) ALMA [CII] 158μm and dust continuum follow-up observations of REBELS-25, a [CII]-luminous (\(\small L_[CII] = (1.7 ± 0.2) × {10^9L_⊙}\)) galaxy at redshift z = 7.3065 ± 0.0001. These high resolution, high signal-to-noise observations allow us to study the sub-kpc morphology and kinematics of this massive (\(\small M_* = 8^{+4}_{-2} \times 10^9 \mathrm{{\rm M}_{\odot }})\) star-forming (SFR \(\small _{\mathrm{UV+IR}} = 199^{+101}_{-63} \mathrm{{\rm M}_{\odot }} \mathrm{yr}^{-1}\) galaxy in the Epoch of Reionisation. By modelling the kinematics with 3DBAROLO, we find it has a low velocity dispersion (\(\small \bar{\sigma } = 33^{+9}_{-7}~\mathrm{km^{s−1}}\)) and a high ratio of ordered-to-random motion (\(\small V_{\mathrm{rot, ~max}}/\bar{\sigma } = 11 ^{+6}_{-5}\)), indicating that REBELS-25 is a dynamically cold disc. Additionally, we find that the [CII] distribution is well fit by a near-exponential disc model, with a Sérsic index, n, of 1.3 ± 0.2, and we see tentative evidence of more complex non-axisymmetric structures suggestive of a bar in the [CII] and dust continuum emission. By comparing to other high spatial resolution cold gas kinematic studies, we find that dynamically cold discs seem to be more common in the high redshift Universe than expected based on prevailing galaxy formation theories, which typically predict more turbulent and dispersion-dominated galaxies in the early Universe as an outcome of merger activity, gas accretion and more intense feedback. This higher degree of rotational support seems instead to be consistent with recent cosmological simulations that have highlighted the contrast between cold and warm ionised gas tracers, particularly for massive galaxies. We therefore show that dynamically settled disc galaxies can form as early as 700 Myr after the Big Bang.
Lucie E Rowland, Jacqueline Hodge, Rychard Bouwens, Pavel E Mancera Piña, Alexander Hygate, Hiddo Algera, Manuel Aravena, Rebecca Bowler, Elisabete da Cunha, Pratika Dayal, Andrea Ferrara, Thomas Herard-Demanche, Hanae Inami, Ivana van Leeuwen, Ilse de Looze, Pascal Oesch, Andrea Pallottini, Siân Phillips, Matus Rybak, Sander Schouws, Renske Smit, Laura Sommovigo, Mauro Stefanon, Paul van der Werf
REBELS-25: Discovery of a dynamically cold disc galaxy at z = 7.31 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2024;, stae2217, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae2217
Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
Is it possible to get a plain English translation of [the above Abstract], complete with a glossary for non-technical readers?The first thing for creationists to ignore is how this finding is at odds with the current consensus about how and when galaxies formed because it appears to be far too well ordered for so early in the life of the Universe. If this finding is subsequently confirmed it will need a re-think about some of the fundamental things we thought we knew. This is, of course at variance with the creationists claim that scientists are never permitted to disagree with the scientific consensus.Here’s a simplified explanation of the abstract, along with a glossary for non-technical readers:
AI-generated image of REBEL-25 from the description in the abstractChatGPT4o
Plain English Translation:
The researchers used a high-resolution telescope (ALMA) to take very detailed pictures and measurements of a distant galaxy called REBELS-25, which formed around 700 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy is large and forming stars rapidly, and it's very bright in certain types of light, especially in an emission called [CII].
The observations let the researchers see the fine structure and movement of gas within the galaxy. They found that it behaves in an orderly way, with gas rotating smoothly, much like in modern spiral galaxies, rather than in a chaotic, turbulent manner. The smooth rotation suggests that this galaxy is a "cold disk," meaning it’s more settled and less chaotic than expected for galaxies this early in the universe.
They also noticed that the structure of the galaxy resembles a disk with possibly more complex features like a bar (a long, straight structure seen in some galaxies), but more evidence is needed. Their findings challenge previous ideas about early galaxies, which suggested they would be more turbulent due to intense star formation, galaxy mergers, and inflows of gas.
This discovery supports newer theories that predict galaxies could settle into stable, rotating systems even this early in the universe.
Glossary:
This simplified explanation covers the key points of the original abstract while making it more accessible.
- ALMA: A powerful telescope array in Chile that observes in radio wavelengths, especially useful for studying distant galaxies.
- [CII] Emission: Light emitted by singly ionized carbon, a key tracer of star formation and gas dynamics in galaxies.
- Redshift (z = 7.3065): A measure of how much the light from the galaxy has been stretched by the expansion of the universe. A higher redshift means the galaxy is farther away and we see it as it was earlier in the universe's history.
- Star Formation Rate (SFR): The rate at which new stars are being born in the galaxy, here measured at 199 solar masses per year (199 times the mass of our Sun).
- Velocity Dispersion: A measure of how fast stars or gas move in random directions within the galaxy. Lower dispersion means less random movement, indicating a more stable system.
- Dynamically Cold Disk: A galaxy where most of the gas moves in a smooth, circular path, indicating an orderly structure rather than chaotic movement.
- Sérsic Index: A number that describes the shape of a galaxy's light profile. A lower index (close to 1) means the galaxy has a simple disk-like structure.
- Non-axisymmetric Structures: Features that aren't symmetrical around the center of the galaxy, like bars or spiral arms.
- Epoch of Reionization: A period in the early universe when the first stars and galaxies formed, lighting up the universe and ionizing the surrounding gas.
This is true of all areas of science where challenging the current consensus is the way to build reputations and create frissons of excitement in the field. It is exactly the opposite of creation 'science' and (I use the term loosely) where employees of the Deception Institute and other creationist front organizations are required to swear an oath to always reach the conclusion required by their paymasters as a condition of employment.
The second thing to ignore is the evidence that this galaxy is from about 14 billion years before creationists believe there ever was a Universe, as confirmed by the 'red shift' in the light coming from it. This of course is just the sort of finding that would never be allowed anywhere near a Deception Institute publication or any site controlled by Ken Ham or his ilk. Any of their functionaries who tried to publish anything like it would be quickly shown the door, deprived of their income and probably sued for breach of contract.
The only mention if this sort of discovery which would be permitted is one which misrepresent the science, bore false witness against the scientists or cited a Bible verse to 'refute' it, like a shaman chanting a protective spell to ward off evil.
What Makes You So Special? From The Big Bang To You
How did you come to be here, now? This books takes you from the Big Bang to the evolution of modern humans and the history of human cultures, showing that science is an adventure of discovery and a source of limitless wonder, giving us richer and more rewarding appreciation of the phenomenal privilege of merely being alive and able to begin to understand it all.
Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle
Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It
This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.
Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment
Obscene, threatening or obnoxious messages, preaching, abuse and spam will be removed, as will anything by known Internet trolls and stalkers, by known sock-puppet accounts and anything not connected with the post,
A claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Remember: your opinion is not an established fact unless corroborated.