<story><title>The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies</title><url>https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/the-james-webb-space-telescope-is-finding-too-many-early-galaxies/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Buttons840</author><text>At this point in the thread, I&amp;#x27;m wondering if we do a disservice to physics students by making it appear we have it all figured out.</text></item><item><author>azalemeth</author><text>My favourite example of the intractabilities of some theories is that magnetohydronamics apparently can&amp;#x27;t predict the formation of streamer jets when you put your finger on a kid&amp;#x27;s plasma ball – i.e. the main point of the toy is beyond the most advanced theory that lies behind NIF, JET, ITER, etc...</text></item><item><author>sebzim4500</author><text>I think this says less about cosmology and more about the incredibly effectiveness of the standard model in the regime we can test directly on earth.&lt;p&gt;If we compare ΛCDM to most other scientific theories it doesn&amp;#x27;t look so bad in terms of discrepancies. Certainly there are many unexplained effects in solid state physics, there isn&amp;#x27;t even an accepted explanation for why rubbing a balloon on your head makes it stick to a wall and that&amp;#x27;s an experiment you probably did as a child.</text></item><item><author>college_physics</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know if this instance qualifies as one, but I think its fair to say that cosmology is the one domain of &amp;quot;fundamental&amp;quot; physics where &amp;quot;discrepancies&amp;quot; or question marks keep piling up and not really resolving.&lt;p&gt;It the pattern of previous science revolutions repeats, there could come a point where reinterpreting the large existing body of knowledge using a different paradigm would explain an number of &amp;quot;oddities&amp;quot; in a more economical way.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know if this generation of telescopes will get us there but it feels that this is a plausible outcome over the next 1-2 decades. Which would be &lt;i&gt;very exciting&lt;/i&gt; :-)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zinclozenge</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve ever, out of all my physics classes up to grad seminars, been given the impression we have everything figured out. In fact, it was hammered into us that all we have are &amp;quot;effective&amp;quot; theories, at least when it comes to high energy physics, and that&amp;#x27;s not even talking about grand unification (electroweak + strong force unification), let alone Theory of Everything (electroweak + strong + gravity).</text></comment>
<story><title>The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies</title><url>https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/the-james-webb-space-telescope-is-finding-too-many-early-galaxies/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Buttons840</author><text>At this point in the thread, I&amp;#x27;m wondering if we do a disservice to physics students by making it appear we have it all figured out.</text></item><item><author>azalemeth</author><text>My favourite example of the intractabilities of some theories is that magnetohydronamics apparently can&amp;#x27;t predict the formation of streamer jets when you put your finger on a kid&amp;#x27;s plasma ball – i.e. the main point of the toy is beyond the most advanced theory that lies behind NIF, JET, ITER, etc...</text></item><item><author>sebzim4500</author><text>I think this says less about cosmology and more about the incredibly effectiveness of the standard model in the regime we can test directly on earth.&lt;p&gt;If we compare ΛCDM to most other scientific theories it doesn&amp;#x27;t look so bad in terms of discrepancies. Certainly there are many unexplained effects in solid state physics, there isn&amp;#x27;t even an accepted explanation for why rubbing a balloon on your head makes it stick to a wall and that&amp;#x27;s an experiment you probably did as a child.</text></item><item><author>college_physics</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know if this instance qualifies as one, but I think its fair to say that cosmology is the one domain of &amp;quot;fundamental&amp;quot; physics where &amp;quot;discrepancies&amp;quot; or question marks keep piling up and not really resolving.&lt;p&gt;It the pattern of previous science revolutions repeats, there could come a point where reinterpreting the large existing body of knowledge using a different paradigm would explain an number of &amp;quot;oddities&amp;quot; in a more economical way.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know if this generation of telescopes will get us there but it feels that this is a plausible outcome over the next 1-2 decades. Which would be &lt;i&gt;very exciting&lt;/i&gt; :-)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>maegul</author><text>So much this! There’s surely a huge argument that all of scientific education is a massive disservice.&lt;p&gt;The point should be to learn and appreciate the method or process of scientific investigation of uncertain and mysterious or hard to understand phenomena.&lt;p&gt;Instead we get dogma as a proxy of measuring intelligence with little regard for what the fundamental tools are of being a scientist.&lt;p&gt;I’ve gone all the way through to Grad School and came out astounded at just how little commitment to or a sense of the essence of scientific investigation and what’s expected of the investigator there is in the system. They don’t prepare you for it because they themselves weren’t prepared. You can try to leverage some meta understanding of the “process” in conversation or debate, but so often the conversation falls flat because few are prepared or accustomed to it. Research is often done, IMO, in philosophical poverty by people eking out a living in the gutters of novelty and paradigmatic safety, averting their gazes from the sky (flourishes aside, you get my point).&lt;p&gt;Putting aside the health of actual research. If the general public is to benefit from education and pass that benefit into their society (that’s the point right), it needs to be more than soon to be forgotten and often useless fallacies.</text></comment>