You can run simulations similar to what's described in the article and really get an intuitive understanding of how these galaxies form and change on a timescale of millions or billions of years.
I know nothing about formal astrophysics but could play with that game for hours (and have). Also kind of makes you realize that studying what's out there is somewhat akin to studying the bubbles that form in a bubble bath -- lots and lots (and lots) of randomness, but still so much to learn...
The article itself doesn't imply that it "shouldn't" exist, just that it's likely due to a combination of factors that would make such galaxies rare. Not open-access unfortunately, but the abstract is actually a reasonable summary: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7407/full/nature1...
Wish they would just show the real pictures in the article rather than an artists depiction, kind of gives an unreasonable expectation of how well we can see a galaxy 10 billion light years distant.
Maybe I'm wrong and the recent strange observations (such as the one commented here and the ones linked below) don't stack up and are explained as fast as they appear?
[although i think from the way you use "keep" you've misunderstood slightly what's happening here. "old" in this article means that it is a long way away and so is observed as it was a long time ago (light takes time to travel from the galaxy to our telescope) and so the galaxy we are seeing is actually [as it was when it was] new. in general, it is expected that galaxies start off as amorphous blobs and (some) become spiral-like as they get older (simplifying hugely). the problem here is that this galaxy [as we see it] is so new (which the article calls "old"!) that it hasn't had time to become such a nice-looking spiral. so it's not "keeping form" as much as "achieving form too early".]
anyway, back to the question. you can divide astronomy into two halves. there's the serendipitous "interesting object" work, like this paper, and then there's the "survey" work. the two are complementary - detailed studies turn up new ideas but can be very misleading (due to chance - this is a good example, where it seems that something looks "mature" simply because it has been disrupted in a way that, accidentally, makes it look like something it is not). in contrast, surveys give us reliable knowledge of how things work "on average", so are more reliable, but take more time and are very "broad brush" (and usually rely on the earlier detailed work for a "focus").
my guess is that a terra-forming (well, galaxy forming) civilization could mislead the former, but not the latter. this is because the universe is very big :o) - the aliens would need time travel and / or faster than light travel (arguably the same thing and generally considered unlikely) in order to affect large volumes of the observable universe. particularly if they took a reasonable time to evolve (you could argue that galaxies need to form and "settle down" before things are stable enough for live to evolve to such a level).
It has definitely been observed that activity by alien intelligence could affect our observations. For example, one astronomer observed that a red giant strong in the infrared and a Dyson Sphere around something like our sun would look pretty similar from many lightyears away.
However, one of the reasons that I tend to believe that we are largely or entirely alone is that there doesn't seem to be anything out there that requires or even really suggests intelligence as an explanation.
[+] [-] nlh|13 years ago|reply
http://universesandbox.com/
You can run simulations similar to what's described in the article and really get an intuitive understanding of how these galaxies form and change on a timescale of millions or billions of years.
I know nothing about formal astrophysics but could play with that game for hours (and have). Also kind of makes you realize that studying what's out there is somewhat akin to studying the bubbles that form in a bubble bath -- lots and lots (and lots) of randomness, but still so much to learn...
[+] [-] _delirium|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gosub|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robryan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JSGraef|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brequinn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|13 years ago|reply
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/101125_galaxies.htm http://www.universetoday.com/10974/distant-galaxy-is-too-mas... http://lsiblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/some-galaxies-look-too-o...
Or maybe theory of how galaxies form is not the part of big bang theory?
Or maybe I just got downvoted because I triggered some peoples cracpot-filter by using "big bang" and "flawed" in the same sentence?
[+] [-] Uchikoma|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewcooke|13 years ago|reply
[although i think from the way you use "keep" you've misunderstood slightly what's happening here. "old" in this article means that it is a long way away and so is observed as it was a long time ago (light takes time to travel from the galaxy to our telescope) and so the galaxy we are seeing is actually [as it was when it was] new. in general, it is expected that galaxies start off as amorphous blobs and (some) become spiral-like as they get older (simplifying hugely). the problem here is that this galaxy [as we see it] is so new (which the article calls "old"!) that it hasn't had time to become such a nice-looking spiral. so it's not "keeping form" as much as "achieving form too early".]
anyway, back to the question. you can divide astronomy into two halves. there's the serendipitous "interesting object" work, like this paper, and then there's the "survey" work. the two are complementary - detailed studies turn up new ideas but can be very misleading (due to chance - this is a good example, where it seems that something looks "mature" simply because it has been disrupted in a way that, accidentally, makes it look like something it is not). in contrast, surveys give us reliable knowledge of how things work "on average", so are more reliable, but take more time and are very "broad brush" (and usually rely on the earlier detailed work for a "focus").
my guess is that a terra-forming (well, galaxy forming) civilization could mislead the former, but not the latter. this is because the universe is very big :o) - the aliens would need time travel and / or faster than light travel (arguably the same thing and generally considered unlikely) in order to affect large volumes of the observable universe. particularly if they took a reasonable time to evolve (you could argue that galaxies need to form and "settle down" before things are stable enough for live to evolve to such a level).
[+] [-] dchichkov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerf|13 years ago|reply
Fun link on that topic: http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/Dyson_sphe...
However, one of the reasons that I tend to believe that we are largely or entirely alone is that there doesn't seem to be anything out there that requires or even really suggests intelligence as an explanation.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hcarvalhoalves|13 years ago|reply
If I understood, the galaxy is 10 billion light years away? Is that correct?