Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
188 comments
·March 20, 2025PaulHoule
1970-01-01
There is growing evidence that doesn't fit the current model. It's funny how 'age is just a number' may be empirically true in a very existential sense.
yoavm
Sorry, but can you elaborate on that? In what sense are you thinking of?
deadbabe
In the sense that the point of “age” is supposed to indicate some kind of progress by which cohorts can be compared and classified into discrete groups.
But increasingly, there is no correlation between age and specific developmental stages. It is merely a number that indicates how long something has been around but not what its current status may be.
ttw44
This galaxy in particular must be one of the first galaxies ever formed. If galaxies are more mature than initially thought, what does this imply about our previous models and imply about what might actually be happening?
hnuser123456
There seems to be a large region of the universe, beyond furthest edges of the observable, but "in front of" the CMB, that is already outside of our past light cone due to expansion of the universe.
hnuser123456
To add, Earth is only ~4.5 billion years old, the universe is 13.7 and possibly double that, so earth is only 1/3 the age of the universe. It took a lot of big stars going supernova to pollute the galaxy with enough dirt to make rocky planets, and in all that meantime, everything has been flying apart, with a significant chunk of it already so far away and expanding away even faster, there is measurable difference between the observable universe and the "whole universe."
AtlasBarfed
I don't know if there was just a crap ton of blue hypergiant stars in the early universe that crank through the fusion ladder in a couple million years, it wouldn't surprise me.
PaulHoule
There are the chemistry problems but the big one is "how did supermassive black holes get so big?" Webb is finding what seem to be huge black holes way back but the black hole problem has been around for at least 25 years if not more.
Supernovae can create black holes in the 10's of solar mass range and they can merge but it would take a long time for those to find each other to merge to the 60 billion solar mass range. You might have processes that make 10^5 solar mass black holes but it would still take a lot of time for those to find each other and merge to make supermassive black holes.
divbzero
So either our understanding of nucleosynthesis is incomplete or the universe is older than we think.
Which one is more likely? Are there assumptions or parameters in our model for the age of the universe that could be inaccurate?
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andsoitis
Probably both.
ck2
Note the theory in this release is the oxygen is from a mature star releasing heavier elements, not plant life.
I thought oxygen detection was extremely difficult, they must have better methods now.
adding:
https://news.arizona.edu/news/how-next-gen-telescopes-could-...
hnuser123456
Oxygen detection on specific exoplanets is very difficult, unless the planet happens to pass between its star and Earth so we can see light passing through its atmosphere. Oxygen detection across an entire galaxy, not as hard.
pixl97
Oxygen detection in space isn't hard, the article in question seems to be an attempt at detecting oxygen on an exoplanet which is massively hard.
Now, conversely, oxygen detection in galaxies/around stars is difficult for another reason. It doesn't want to remain free oxygen and will gladly bind with any other atoms/molecules it runs into.
https://now.northropgrumman.com/what-happens-to-oxygen-in-sp...
fph
Technically, all oxygen is from stars. Plants merely recombine chemically already-existing oxygen.
gentle
I'm always fascinated by the posters here who insist on second-guessing the writers and the scientists who spend their whole lives studying a topic like this.
No one needs to read your post fessing up to your profound ignorance and the fact that you didn't really read the link.
dvt
I second this, and it tends to be a sitewide issue. HN has really changed over the past 5+ years: went from healthy or interesting skepticism to reddit-style snarkiness and shitposting.
jader201
From the guidelines [1]:
> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
(With that last sentence linking to 9 examples in [1].)
simonsarris
You don't think it's changed? You've been here about as long as we have. At some point you can't rely on it being a noob illusion if a place actually does change. The guideline is not a magic incantation that prevents it from never becoming false. Snarky replies used to be routinely downvoted swiftly, now they are not.
acdha
There’s always been some of that but it does feel like it’s getting worse. I think there’s a general shift in how people approach Skinner-ized apps and social media, where a couple of generations have been trained to prioritize a number going up, but also something about how politics became both post-factual and unavoidable even in communities which used to avoid it, all of which has driven a lot of former contributors away.
I’m not sure how to rebalance things - and certainly won’t claim to be perfect about not taking the bait myself – but it seems to be slowly starving a lot of communities which don’t have some in-person anchoring.
umeshunni
> Skinner-ized
What does this mean? A quick Google search didn't help me
mmooss
You might read the guidelines, much older than five years, about saying HN has changed, and also saying it's more like reddit.
lordnacho
I don't think I've ever been on a forum that doesn't have comments to that effect regularly.
"It was better a few years ago, it's all going to hell now, we're becoming Reddit/4Chan/Slashdot"
It's the internet forum version of "the youth has gotten lazy, it weren't like this when I were a lad"
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booleandilemma
This is refreshing to hear compared to all of the "HN is becoming Reddit, omg!" comments and threads that pop up every couple weeks.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=380385
From 2008 :)
mlekoszek
Unless, of course, it continually has been becoming Reddit, but Reddit has been constantly changing too ;)
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ForTheKidz
That's hardly isolated to this site. COVID did a number on us.
Fwiw, people have been saying this since the site started. Don't worry. There will always be a safe space for rich assholes to divorce themselves from reality and romanticize their exploitation.
jcims
I'm probably guilty of making comments that read this way at times, but it's almost always out of curiosity and a dash of invoking Cunningham's law.
Lately I've started feeding my questions into LLMs to explore these ideas. Given that I will almost certainly never make a decision where an improper understanding of astrophysics is at fault, I'm willing to run the risk of hallucinations leading me to improper conclusions. :)
For the morbidly curious: https://chatgpt.com/share/67dc94a3-07c8-800c-bdbf-039dd2ce50...
(It's funny, I've seen people say that they generally don't even bother with spell checking questions to LLMs because it doesn't seem to make any difference. I was tempted to rerun this before posting to fix the disorganized thoughts in my questions, but I ain't got time for that.)
atonse
I love this chat. This is exactly the kind of chat I’ve had with ChatGPT about things like Native American reservations, their history, etc.
Stuff like this is what I love most about these LLMs.
As someone who minored in astronomy and especially loved stuff about stellar life cycles, I didn’t see any red flags in what you were told.
jcims
Nice! It's like having a patient neighbor that knows a lot about some topic but, you know, don't bet your life on it being accurate haha.
Thanks!!!
hadlock
The acronym RTFA is probably older than the mean age of the posters here, for a reason
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atkailash
[dead]
gwervc
> the fact that you didn't really read the link
I think this is due to a big flaw in the link aggregator website model. In the forums of yore, we had a post creating a discussion that was a must read, and everything was contained in the same place. Links were part of the post but as side dishes sprinkled over the OP.
In the aggregator model, which is arguably a dumbed-down model of forum, there is no OP. Or more accurately, what can be interpreted as the post is the title of linked content, not the linked content itself. Clicking and reading to an external link is a burden and a disconnection to the discussion on the aggregator. In the end, a lot of discussion occurs based only on the content visible in the aggregator, that is the title. One might regret it, but it's the format pushing this behavior.
Also since there is an endless stream of content instead of threads being dumped, I feel comments are more fire and forget.
PS: did not read the linked post.
gosub100
Science cannot be trusted anymore. Journals don't validate anything they submit. Departments are rewarded by how much money they wring out of the government, not by whether what they say is true. Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong.
Also you don't sound "fascinated", so if you're complaining at least be honest about it. There are many more descriptive words than "fascinated".
ranger207
> Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong.
Isn't that what's they're supposed to do? "Hey we found this thing, here's how we did it." Next week: "Yeah I checked your data and got different results, let's figure out what's different." A few months/years later: "We've figured out where the problems were and now have a better understanding of this."
awesome_dude
Yeah - people forget that the true advantage science has over other methodologies is that it accepts that what is believed today could be proved wrong tomorrow by new data.
There are no absolutes, we're just formulating theories to best fit what data we have now, and, if new conflicting data (or even existing data that was misunderstood/misread/misclassified as being irrelevant) disproves our theory we formulate a new one to try and account for the extra data.
lz400
I think this is a real problem but your post is an exaggeration. There are cases of fraud in science. There is a reproducibility crisis in some areas. There are political angles and rent seeking wrt grants. But how widespread is it? You're assuming it's close to 100% without evidence. I don't claim to have the exact number but intuitively yours is extraordinary (so it would need extraordinary evidence). I think these issues affect some areas much more than others and some regions more than others. I still believe science is the best way of enquiry for the natural world.
gosub100
I'm not assuming it's close to 100%, I'm countering the GPs criticism of people who are skeptical about the title. He's saying "how dare you question these science experts!?!" And I'm saying the reason people do that is because scandals like LK99 erode the credibility.
mmooss
> Science cannot be trusted anymore. Journals don't validate anything they submit. Departments are rewarded by how much money they wring out of the government, not by whether what they say is true. Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong.
What do you feel when you post that?
gosub100
I feel like my tax dollars are wasted and the college students are being lied to with their ever-increasing tuition that somehow promises them a future when their departments are led by liars.
joquarky
Oxygen is everywhere.
Hydrogen is everywhere.
The possibilities are interesting.
NotAnOtter
Given how simple Water is and how readily available it's components are, it's inevitable there are many planets with vast oceans.
UI_at_80x24
At least 30% of the bodies in _our_ solar system have vast oceans.
You are right, it's inevitable.
alex_young
Water oceans? It’s far far from 30% isn’t it? Is there an image of a single water ocean not on Earth?
hsnewman
I would be shocked if it were not found everywhere.
analog31
I'd be more worried if there was a whole bunch of carbon dioxide.
umeshunni
Funny you say that because this article just came out the other day
https://www.sciencealert.com/jwst-detects-carbon-dioxide-out...
interludead
Finding oxygen in a galaxy this young is pretty wild
lab14
Why?
Keyframe
probably because it depends on the star types that produce oxygen; it takes awhile until these stars form from previous in sequence. https://science.nasa.gov/universe/stars/types/#neutron-stars
interludead
Because oxygen is formed in stars and then dispersed when they die (like in supernovae), so finding it in such a young galaxy means that at least one generation of massive stars had already formed and died
fasteo
Off topic:
- Is the big bang theory the scientific consensus on the origin and evolution of the universe ?
- What are the alternatives ?
elashri
Big bang theory really a term describing the moment the universe started and not the evolution and how things evolved with time which have more questions than answer. The standard model of cosmology is the most accepted theory about universe. But you can't have knowledge about anything before the singularity. Actually we don't even know for sure what happens in the seconds after that because we need a much more powerful colliders than what we have now to produce the same conditions. But there are many theories about what could have happened.
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pixl97
Add to it we need much more reliable ways to detect super weak neutrinos. If we had that ability we could see into the first seconds of the universe whereas the universe was dark to light for hundreds of thousands of years.
moomin
I mean, there is at the very least a theory that at very small levels, the quantum effects take over and we’re actually looking at a cyclic bang/crunch model. It’s literally discussed in A Brief History of Time. But this is more of a refinement.
okayishdefaults
Consider the bbt as a collection of observations and models that are independently validated. As each of those components reach increasingly accurate representations of what we observe, the bbt improves.
In this way, there can be no alternative as there is no alternative to music theory. Some people may have a very narrow view of music theory, but it truly encompasses every model we accept about aspects of music.
Tldr- the questions can't be answered because the bbt is a not a theory like "THE theory of relativity". The "theory" is at the end of the term which denotes a collection and not a specific model.
epistasis
Big Bang Theory is a bunch of really solid observations and hypotheses mixed with a bunch of open questions, even about the fundamental nature of forces.
It was only 30 years ago that we discovered what we call now dark energy. And it turns out that within that short time frame we have multiple ways of measuring the amount of it, and those methods agree. There is more dark energy than dark matter, and that the visible matter is even a small fraction of the dark matter. But even with this discovery of the acceleration of expansion of the universe, the core big bang theory holds.
There are many alternatives to the predominant and not-yet-accepted-as-true Lambda-Cold Dark Matter model of physics, such as Timescapes, but none of them have enough evidence behind them to be considered serious alternatives at the moment.
Things like the Baryonic Acoustic Oscillation theoretical predictions, that are visualized in the spacing of galaxies, are literally mind blowing to me. Theoretical physics predicted how matter would behave when it's so hot and dense that none of it can even form atoms, and it predicts the structure of all sorts of things, even the variability we observe in the cosmic microwave background.
TL;DR The depth and consistency of observation that point to a big bang are stunning. But we still have so much we don't know about the particulars, and the fundamental forces.
gitaarik
> Off topic: > > - Is the big bang theory the scientific consensus on the origin and evolution of the universe ?
Yes, because this theory currently best describes our observations, but there are still many anomalies. Like dark matter / energy / quantum physics / axis of evil.
> - What are the alternatives ?
The big crunch, where the universe ultimately shrinks again. You also have a theory that it expands and shrinks and loops like that. You also have several string theories where they propose that the whole universe is a hologram projection of a higher dimension.
But these theories are lacking certain important explanations of certain observations we have, that most people still keep the Big Bang Theory as the most accurate.
thangalin
The first four explanations of illustrations in my book delve into your off-topic point and bring it back on-topic:
DFHippie
Beautiful!
thesz
Big Flash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSSDi22NVFo
As if matter existed and then there was a creation of light at some moment. Red shift is explained by interaction of light with gravitational field - the more distant source of light, the longer it travels under the influence of gravity and the more red it becomes.
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shemtay
@dang the article does not seem to imply that molecular oxygen was found. maybe retitle to "Oxygen element" or "Atomic oxygen"?
EGreg
How can they possibly be sure that it is oxygen doing that?
abrookewood
It is mind bending, but well understood (just not by me): we measure oxygen in distant galaxies using spectroscopy to identify specific emission lines in the galaxy's light, especially in the infrared spectrum.
vpribish
they are witches and read it in the tea leaves, i guess. i didn't read the article
null
It fits the theme that, according to Webb, the universe developed a lot more quickly in what we think were the first billion years... Most likely the "first billion years" were more like five billion years.