It feels so weird to have grown up watching Sixty Symbols as a kid and then as a grad student wind up being part of a work that gets covered here 😅

It _is_ possible to explain difficult science in a correct, non-spectacular, non-oversimplified, not-pr-like yet interesting way to everyone interested in the subject. My compliments for every video so far.

Best KZfaq channel there is.

While the explanation was enlightening, I loved the last part the most, starting at 11:04. Something could be wrong. And then see the excitement and humbleness of the scientist delving in how his/our understanding might be wrong, closing in his preference to study nearby galaxies because they look nice. This gave the video a wholesome human touch.

2:53 - Whoever does those animations really needs to be told that *redshift (of something that starts out blue) doesn't go **_through_** purple.* It's (at least) the second time they make something go blue -> magenta-> red, which is the _opposite_ of the way redshift works. It would go blue -> green -> yellow -> red (progressively *increasing* wavelengths / decreasing frequencies). In fact, magenta isn't a wavelength at all, it's just the way our brain interprets a mix of frequencies at the low and high end of our visible visible spectrum (i.e., red and blue/violet), in the absence of mid-range frequencies (i.e., yellow / green). If you're doing a colour shift to illustrate some physical property and going _through_ magenta, you're doing something wrong.

It's actually cool when science and discovery throws you for a loop and is not exactly what you expected

only 12 minutes ?? i can watch Mike for hours !

As well as the Lyman and Balmer, if you spot the Amen Break in your spectra then you can confidently date the galaxy's formation to no earlier than 1969.

Mike Merrifield is the platonic ideal form of a science educator.

Wow, this video is an amazing explanation. I saw another video about lyman-alpha breaks (going over similar observations from JWST) and I sort of got it, but this gives a really great explanation of how it occurs and what the double break means. Thanks!

Very likely the best explanation about these distant mysterious galaxies I’ve heard so far on any of the astronomy/physics KZfaq channels I subscribe to! Well done!!!!

It's good to see a fresh Sixty Symbols on the channel. Thank you! 👍🏼

Really appreciate Dr. Merrifield's clear explanations of this stuff. Can't wait for more JWST data and more explanations. We'll be wrong about more stuff, and I am here for it! :)

This is probably the best science talk I remember. Clear, concise, engaging, ACCURATE. Bravo, professore!

This is the best explanation of the wavelength breaks I’ve ever heard. I feel like I finally understand 😅

Professor Merrifield constructs such a beautiful narrative in terms of explaining the paper. He doesn't even reach the crux of the paper till more than midway in the video, providing a solid understanding and context, building it up till he explains the paper itself. Masterfully done

Oh my gosh I’ve never seen ionisation described with an energy level diagram like that - that’s amazing!

And THIS is how you explain things! Sure it raised a lot of questions in the end, but that's just a good thing. Thank you so much!

I gotta say as someone who considers switching to science journalism Brady is one of the biggest inspirations I have had for a long time. It's always excellent especially in a field where there a so many people doing it badly. If you read this thank you!

What a Beautiful explanation!

Thank you for this.

Thank you. I needed all of this reasoning part of the argument.

Amazing video. I hope to see an update about this paper in the future :)

If I had to keep watching one youtube channel for rest of my life, it would be this channel. Absolutely loved this video!

It's incredible how much can be resolved from so little signal - a few pictures in different wavelengths and a few very clever people with the right tools can break the current understanding of galaxy formation. Remarkable.

Brilliant. Clear crisp and entertaining !!

Crazy nice explanation Thanks

Mike Merrifield is just awesome at explaining the most intricate theories. Thank you so much.

Superbly explained! Thank you!

Great video, thanks!

Thank you for explaining the double break. Seems intuitive in hindsight.

Magnificent video! Thanks for keeping it current and not dumbing things down too much. Would love to know more about the limit of how far back we can measure objects VS time of Big Bang.

Fantastic video!

Fascinating!

Things like this are often dumbed down or badly explained but this video (and channel) is excellent.

Best explanation of why ionized gas is opaque I've ever heard and the video just got started!

What I like most is how Prof. Merrifield gets *most* excited when Brady asks him what could potentially be *wrong* with his own work at about 11:03. That is a sort of concentrated form of the spirit of inquiry as seen through facial expression and gesture.

best channel on yt. thanks fellas

Is it right to say that the closer the light spectrum to the (lyman, balmer, ...) breaks, the easier it its to identify the object and how far it is?

Excellent.

I love sixty symbols so much

just fantastic.

Not connected to this video, but please do a video on Ho'oleilana.

Great explanation of "the problem" that even a knuckle dragger like me could somewhat understand.

Didn't those early stars tend to be more massive? Could that mean that the 200 million years for the big stars to explode number could be wrong for the earliest galaxies? Or do we always get a certain number of stars that need 200 million years to explode?

I always wondered how you attribute a red shifted transmission line to a specific element. But I guess sufficient resolution as well as multiple peaks is the way to go.

Yes!

I have a question... maybe I don't know enough about science in general, but what are the units of time considered when studying this, I always get confused about the mindset applied when understanding these subjects, is it the time applied only for light speed? Or is it about factoring OUR time unit into analyzing this? (I'm sorry if I sound dumb... u.u)

From what i understand, the longer the wavelength the harder it is to resolve fine details. Does it mean we get less "features"/information when looking at extremely far objects?

Mike Merrifield is my favorite Professor

I wish I could give this 100 likes. Very well done!

If the electron is ionized and has been torn away from the atom, what is then absorbing the energy? As I understand it, the protons can't do that, only the electrons. But, do they still have higher energy states if they are no longer a part of an atom?

". . . they are not really very exciting, are they?" "ngaaa" 😂 @12:00

I mean, it would be pretty boring if JWST just confirmed our existing theories.

I'm having a hard time with this: You say you have dips in the spectrum because some wavelength are absorbed by the specific energy levels... But you also say that anything below the maximum energy level tends to be absorbed which results in a big dip in the lower end the spectrum... But is that before the dips mentioned earlier if those dips are from energy levels that are part of the range that causes the big dip?

Neat

This is really interesting, but as a layperson, I gotta say my immediate concern would be...we have Red Shift, AND we have the contention that these galaxies are red as a separate feature? That's SO much red! How do we know which red is which???

Is there really a big problem being “off” by a factor of 2 regarding anything like distance or time in the very early Universe?

My intuition is that early galaxies would coalesce and grow in the early universe significantly faster than they could later. The density of mass to accrete was much higher and had much shorter distance to travel to clump up. It could have been quite reasonable for some to form within the first couple hundred million years. Was this not actually the case? Has it been shown that the galaxies didn't form much faster?

Was there some motivation for specifically searching for massive galaxies in this redshift range? Was there reason to speculate that the prevailing theory (that such massive/early galaxies are rare) was wrong, or was this a stab in the dark?

The JWST finding galaxies so close to when the Big Bang is supposed to have occurred is like taking someone to an island that is supposed to of never had human habitation and when you get there you find a shopping mall.

2:50 that animation showed red shifting through the blue part of the spectrum, instead of the yellow part...

Out of interest, what Z number do these galaxies equate to please?

Is it possible that early galaxies had a higher proportion of red dwarf stars than modern galaxies? If they did, would the light from those stars be so red shifted that we have no instruments capable of seeing them at all? How would that affect the mass calculations of early galaxies?

So this is saying that stars formed and started going through their lifecycle, *before* the hydrogen recombination that released the CMB?

I'd solidly bet that there's more to redshift than the Doppler effect. An "intrinsic" redshift.

Professor Copeland would smack you for drawing a hydrogen atom as a nucleus with a little ball orbiting around it.

I like to think that when we encounter extraterrestrial intelligent life, and they don't know as much as we know, we will teach them with markers drawn on printer paper.

I am wondering if we expect to finally find population III stars with the JWST.

But how are they determining the galaxy masses with such certainty of measurements ?

I do not understand. If the edge of the visible universe is the beginning of time, how can that increasingly large sphere of galaxies all fit back into the tinier sphere 1,100³ times smaller ?

Why is so short this video? I demand a second part

Of course the observation is not wrong, the problem lies in the theories. But the explanations are beaten into the astronomers probably since childhood. So its difficult for them to go outside, and seek a new fundamental explanation. This is good that it shakes out the flaws.

I wonder how early universe SMBHs have to do with this unexpected result. Maybe if their masses were higher than previously thought at this stage.

Dr. Mike talks about Ballmer Breaks, but there needs to be awareness about the Ballmer Peak 😉

They will throw food in boxes and ice coolers for tigers so they can be mentally stimulated trying to get in them. The mysteries of the universe are boxes and coolers for humans

Didn’t stars come before galaxies? Couldn’t these stars have come before they all gathered together to form a galaxy

All the simulations of galaxy formation I’ve seen are of a disperse soup of material; though as I understand it the very early universe was very dense, to where fusion and black holes happened not just inside the hearts of stars. Cuz that’s where and when those supermassive black holes at galactic centers formed, right? Wouldn’t it make sense that, after the formation of these galactic cores, but before the universe got as sparse as it would be by the galactic era, the supermassive black holes kept a lot of the mass around then? Like, their gravity held onto the dense matter against inflation, so the earliest galaxies would have started out with a lot more mass?

The observations are not wrong. But our interpretation of the redshift is. We took for granted that the fabric of our own galactic plane, doesnt distort the photon image. But it does! The recent EHT image of sag a* clearly proves a quantum effect is taken place turning the image of the centre of our galaxy 90 degrees rotated. Likewise we will have a distorted image of our outward view of the cosmos, as a QP effect would also entail the inverse arrow of time when looking out. Meaning a cosmoc redshift os actually a blue shift. Which means galaxies are heading towards us, not away. Likewise they are NOT related to a big bang event so they could be much older than we think. Problem solved. Next please.

My monthly dose of sixty symbols is HEERE!

Seeee red was first all the time :D ❤️

What I always wondered is why isn't there a different red shift on one side of these distant galaxies. If they are rotating then one side would be traveling toward us or a considerable amount slower than the side moving away from us thereby causing a different red shift. And wouldn't the gravity of the source galaxy actually cause a red shift as well, especially after working on that light for a few billion years? Then you have to add in the blue shift caused by our galaxy pulling on the light for billions of years too.

If they build a Space Telescope for the microwave\mm bands the same effect will appear. There was no big bang. CMBR also disproves BBT because CMBR maps change every year which is not possible. Most of the CMBR comes from inside the milky way. The better the instruments get, the older the universe gets.

And if these distant galaxies are that massive and that far away, there might be others even further away.

Maybe the universe has always existed and it's pouring in from a place similar to the one it's pouring out.

Can't two (or more) old small galaxies merge to become what is now seen as a massive old one ?

Any chance massive stars were just less likely to form in the early universe?

These galaxies are obviously embarrassed over arriving early.

Early crew!

Can scientists make the current observations fit the current theory and then see how different the observations would have to be to be accurate? Maybe only 1 measurement is 0.001% off and that might throw the whole thing out of whack

Illustrations are goid, but could we also demonstrate the curve with filters and photos of physical lights on Earth? A neon light or a hydrogen flame in a lab, for example.

Hello!

Halton Arp would probably disagree. I'd love to know why he is wrong....

balmer break? i am only aware of the ballmer peak! 😂 Google it if you don't know 😂

1:00 that wedding ring looks extremely tight and uncomfortable. I hope he's doing ok.

I wonder hypothetically.. If money was no object and all of the resources of human civilization were simultaneously dedicated to building one telescope.. what could we make and what could we see..

If space and time are linked, wouldn't time have been working at a different speed in the early universe?

He knows what he's talking about

Why are they considered red if it is the ionizing radiation coming from stars that causes the breaks? I guess the models are throwing more older stars than young ones?

Ah, things were just closer together back then.. closer relative to atom size anyway. Mergers were just easier then.