JWST has made the "Crisis in Cosmology" WORSE (AGAIN) | Night Sky News Sep 2023



If you’re struggling, consider therapy with BetterHelp #ad. Click https://betterhelp.com/drbecky for a 10% discount on your first month of therapy with a credentialed professional specific to your needs. In this month’s Night Sky News we’re chatting about the Chandrayaan-3 mission to the South Pole of the Moon, evidence of wet-dry cycle of water on early Mars which gives the right conditions to form the molecules for life, and the latest evidence for JWST which has added fire to the “crisis in cosmology” (aka the Hubble Tension). Plus what you should look out for in the night sky in the next month.

My previous videos on the “crisis in cosmology”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hps-HfpL1vc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLL_8ArJIis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnn_5YMpo3Q

Rapin et al. (2023; wet-dry cycles on Mars BEHIND PAYWALL) – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06220-3
Byrne et al. (2009; impacts expose sub-surface ice on Mars) – https://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~shane/publications/byrne_etal_science_withSOM_2009.pdf
Goehring (2013; wet-dry cycles and mud cracks recreated in the lab) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.6762.pdf
JWST proposal 1726 to observe SN1987A – https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/phase2-public/1726.pdf
Arendt et al. (2019; Spitzer observations of SN1987A) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.12207.pdf
Reiss et al. (2023; JWST and the crisis in cosmology) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.15806.pdf
Yuan et al. (2022; JWST first look at cepheids) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.09101.pdf
JWST proposal 1995 to tackle the Hubble tension – https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/phase2-public/1995.pdf

00:00 Intro
00:55 15th September – New Moon + Milky Way!
01:46 16th September – Toenail Moon + Mars!
02:06 19th September – Neptune opposition!
02:52 How to spot Jupiter + Saturn into October!
03:58 Early Oct. Venus + Toenail Moon
04:35 BetterHelp Partnership
06:31 Chandrayaan-3 & Luna 25
12:07 Water cycles on early Mars!
18:15 JWST images Supernova 1987A
20:23 JWST deepens the “Crisis in Cosmology”
27:30 Conclusion
28:08 Bloopers

Video edited by Jonny Hyman: https://www.youtube.com/@theHumanVerse

Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV

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📚 “The Year In Space” celebrating all things space in 2022 from me and the rest of the Supermassive Podcast team: https://geni.us/jNcrw

👕 My new merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/

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👩🏽‍💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online – you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

http://drbecky.uk.com
https://rebeccasmethurst.co.uk

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35 thoughts on “JWST has made the "Crisis in Cosmology" WORSE (AGAIN) | Night Sky News Sep 2023”

  1. Absolutely horrible news.. I can no longer make fun of the metric system for not landing on the moon. :< What a horrible day.

    But still entertaining news never the less. 🙂 I'm curious about the kilanova events though.

    Reply
  2. Slight quibble. Chandrayaan 3 landed at 69.3 degrees south. If that counts as landing "at the moon's south pole", then you're using a definition of a pole with which I am not familiar!

    It landed nearer to the lunar south pole than anyone has ever done before, but it wasn't especially close. It wasn't even technically in the south polar *region*, which would have required landing at greater than 70 degrees south.

    Reply
  3. what about the light hitting things between you and the target sepheid? random atoms, every star around it wil hit it with light and some of that light will reflect to you. ambient space has light when far enough away.

    Reply
  4. I wish science reporting would wait for peer review among other things. The lay public poorly understands the scientific process and with the fraud and lack of repeatability that scientists have been rooting out in the last few years, science has taken a beating in the public eyes. (Not to mention all those who wish science would be our authoritative source of knowledge and policy action).

    Reply
  5. I still question the south pole moon search for water since it is a fairy tale that humans can be put on a "base" on the moon without signing their own death warrant from all their health problems. There are like a MILLION problems to overcome that makes transporting water a relatively simple problem.

    Reply
  6. unfortunately the way the solar sytem came into existance is not understood..the theory
    is wrong….as too much in kosmology ….scientists already developed a new theory that
    strangely enough even predicts accurately the discoveries that cant be explained by tradi
    tional science….its called the electric universe….

    Reply
  7. @drbecky, I have a question: You've mentioned the Cosmic Microwave Background a few times. Is there any chance that this is NOT the aftermath of the big bang, but is in fact the output from the heat death of a previous universe? – which would imply a cyclical process for the birth and death of the universe.

    Reply
  8. All the way to the end…. Twice. I had to listen to the JWST again. May have to do it a 3rd time when I can solely focus on what you are say… And I'd love 30 right now. Its been 43 here until last week where it dropped to 30 but its back up to 35.

    Reply
  9. I think they may find that the ice is more valuable than a source of water or fuel. Keep in mind that as soon as we come to understand how water behaves on the moon, it will may provide a means of tracking historical events much as glacial cores are used on earth. We will also likely be able to gain a huge amount of data on meteorites since the cores of meteorites hitting that ice will be comparatively easy to find, with their force, direction and distribution relatively easy to determine

    Reply
  10. There could be a major flaw in the interpretation of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. It assumes there are gaps in the night sky where there are no stars and galaxies. In those gaps, there is a residual background radiation. But this concept falls apart due to the Hubble Deep Field findings. In fact, there are no gaps because every visual field has galaxies too faint to resolve with the radio telescope. Every field is filled by galaxies so faint that it took (30 days?) for the Hubble Telescope to resolve them. The James Webb is able to fill in the gaps more successfully. If there are basically no gaps, then the Cosmic Microwave Radiation background is just due to unseen galaxies too far away to resolve.

    Reply
  11. The field does itself and the greater scientific community a great disservice by continuing to refer to this as a crisis.

    It's not a crisis, it is the normal progression of science. We make a model, and all models are wrong, then we develop tools to make better measurements and determine where our models are wrong.

    This is the height of science, its greatest moment. The moment in which we challenge our assumptions and replace our ignorance with evidence. This is the glory of science, it is in every way the opposite of a crisis.

    Reply
  12. Henrietta Leavitt Space Telescope. — Cepheids and standard candles being in the focus of attention again is yet another reminder the 'stronger than hubble' space telescope should be called after the scientist who made modern cosmology possible, including E. Hubble's discoveries.
    (Not after some administration careerist who failed as a decent human by abusing their power to hunt for gay employees, end their careers and brand them publicly.)

    Reply
  13. The observations of the two methods of dating the universe are getting more precise (range of estimate). Accuracy (being in the right area) is unknown. Both cannot be accurate (though, if the truth is halfway between the estimates they can be equally inaccurate).

    Reply
  14. I love how every new instrument brings a crisis in cosmology.
    The Luddites in charge of quackademia are stuck on a gravity-centric model when it's clear that assumption is completely bogus with every new discovery.

    It's a PLASMA UNIVERSE folks, governed by ELECTRIC AND MAGNETIC FIELDS. Gravity only comes into play when things cool off.
    "Gravitational systems are the ashes of prior electrical systems." – Hannes Alfven

    Reply
  15. Those CMB maps are complete frauds, just so you know. They DELETE the contribution of the galaxy which overwhelms the detectors along the galactic disk. MEANING every galaxy is also a source of microwaves in the bands of interest. The CMB is a low resolution map of galactic distribution.

    Reply

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