JK: These guys speak doublespeak. A recently formed galaxy proves all galaxies are formed from a big bang? Baloney.
You do seem to have a highly individualized manner of parsing the
English language. The CNN webpage says: "
Hubble's pictures of POX 186 support theories that all galaxies were put together from smaller "building blocks" of gas and stars that formed soon after the theoretical Big Bang, the cosmic explosion many astronomers think gave birth to the universe.
When I read this, it says that is supports a theory for a particular mechanism of galaxy formation, with its relationship to the Big Bang being incidental. And of course, nobody says anything about "proof".
Also see "
POX 186: A Dwarf Galaxy in the Process of Formation?, M.R. Corbin & W.D. Vacca, Astrophysical Journal 581(2): 1039-1046, December 20, 2002.
But also note that this is an example of scientists changing their minds. In a previous paper, it was argued that the color of POX 186 was consistent with an older stellar population, and argued against it being a young galaxy (
POX 186: the ultracompact blue compact dwarf galaxy reveals its nature, V. Doublier
et al., Astronomy and Astrophysics 353(3): 887-892, January 2000;
HTML version).
The newer paper by Corbin & Vacca indicates that "
The outer regions of the galaxy are significantly redder than the cluster", which would account for the earlier decision, based only on ground based observations, that POX 186 could not be a young galaxy, as they were responding to this redder colored halo. The ability of
HST to resolve the galaxy structure & stellar populations allows the decision to be reversed, and the new indication that the galaxy is young.
Of course that does not "prove" the Big Bang, but then again, I don't see how anyone could read that into the press release or CNN article, except as either pure bias or just a joke.
But there are two significant indications that make this a newsworthy item for astronomers. First, the idea that galaxies can form from the merger of smaller pieces. Since nobody is really sure how galaxies form, any observational advance in that area has to count for something. Current theories hold that the post Big Bang universe will host these smaller pieces, and that they can merge to form galaxies. Theory supports this notion, but observation of galaxy formation at high redshift remains to be achieved. Observation of such a phenomenon in the local universe at least goes far enough to make the mechanism plausible. That in turn removes one more objection to Big Bang cosmology, based on the argument that galaxies can't form in a Big Bang cosmology. We now have both theory & observation to indicate that they
could form.
Secondly, the common idea that galaxies are no longer forming in the universe is shown to be erroneous, if the interpretation of the observation is valid. If that is true, then we can hope for even more observational examples of galaxy formation to support or refute theories of galaxy formation.
Some links to recent papers on galaxy formation: