April 06, 2005

First galaxies arrived early, and overweight

New observations of the very early universe have come up with a suprise, the galaxies in it are very much like the ones of today. This is odd because if the universe followed the model that the consensus of Cosmologist beleive to be correct then gallaxies that early should not look like the gallaxies of today, as the consensus is that gallaxies grow by merging with other gallaxies and these ones formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang so there was not enough time for them to grow by merging. Unless the universe si considerably older than it is believed to be, in which case something is wrong with the current model and my guess is Inflation.

Inflation was first posited before we knew that the rate of expansion of the universe was accelerating. It was made because in the previous model where the rate of expansion of the universe was slowing down it must have started off explandin very fast, and so there was not enough time for temperature distribution of the universe to become as even as it is now. Inflation solved this by having some 'mystery force' which took a small region of the universe that had an even temperature distribution and expanding it very very rapidly until it filled most of the visible universe, at which point the 'mystery force' was turned off. There is no direct evidence of Inflation or the 'mystery force' that caused it. It was and still is a fudge to get around a hole in the previous, now superceded, model of the early universe. Time for another look at whether it is needed at all.

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