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Oldest Space Object To Date
Wind Walker writes "CNN has an excellent article regarding a recently-discovered galaxy that's more than 14 billion light years away. "So what?", you're probably asking. Well, this galaxy (unnamed at the time) is said to have formed during the cosmic Dark Age (between 500 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang) when no galaxies should have been giving off light."
This may mean that the universe is much older. Maybe 17 billion.That is just weird. For so long, the universe has been 14.5 B.
Or maybe galaxies just formed faster than we thought.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
before the photograph was developed.
I'm serious - I wonder how many of these images are accidental defects in the photo plates etc.
Anybody ever head of a news relezse and then retracting it?
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
I was puzzled to find how they measured this distance. And then I found this text, wich is very interesting.
u b/stars2/stars2.htm
Extracted from http://benps.benallaps.vic.edu.au/Science/Earth/s
How far to the stars?
On a clear dark night, the stars can seem to be very close indeed and they all seem to be simply hanging in the sky. Measuring the distances to the stars has been virtually impossible without modern telescopes and measurement techniques.
We now know that the stars are at incredible distances from us. Not only is there a considerable range of distances to all of the different stars and other objects within our galaxy, but there are also billions of other galaxies. In this topic we shall investigate how to measure the distances to the stars.
Measuring how far to nearby stars - the parallax technique
The distance to a nearby star can be measured using its apparent change in position against the far distant stars over six months. During a six month period, the Earth travels halfway around the Sun. By sighting a nearby star when we are on one side of the Sun and again sighting it against the background of stars six months later, an estimate of how far it is to the star can be made.
More distant stars - using absolute brightness
The farther a star is from us, the smaller the angle through which it will seem to move as the Earth orbits the Sun. Stars that are approximately 1% of the distance across our galaxy are too far for their distances to be measured using the parallax technique.
However, astronomers have devised other methods of distance measurement, which typically rely on analysing the light of stars - or clusters of stars - to find how bright they really are, then inferring their distance by observing how bright they appear to us. This could be likened to finding how bright a torch globe really is, and then shining it towards an observer. Armed with knowledge of the real brightness, the observer could find the distance to the torch by measuring its brightness as seen from his location (the farther away it is, the fainter it would appear to him).
Very distant objects - the red shift technique
When astronomers peer toward distant galaxies, they can see very few - or none at all - of its individual constituent stars. Another technique is used which relies on an important discovery made early in the 20th century. Astronomers found that, on a large scale, the galaxies are moving apart from one another due to the overall expansion of the Universe. In addition, there is a connection between the distance to a galaxy and the speed at which it is moving away from us: the more distant galaxies are receding more quickly.
The speed of recession from us can be found by observing the galaxy's light: by measuring how much the light is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, it is possible to find its speed (a galaxy with blue-shifted light would be approaching us). The distances to galaxies can therefore be inferred using this technique.
Light years
Stars and other distant objects are so far away that we do not measure their distances in kilometres or even billions of kilometres, but in "light years". A light year is the distance that light can travel through space in one year. Light travels at 300 000 km/sec and over a year this is equivalent to 9.5 trillion (thousand billion) km!
The nearest star Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light years from Earth. The furthest object yet found is a quasar, 12 billion light years away. That is, the light has taken 12 billion years to get to us! This quasar probably does not even exist any more. Astronomers like to say that they are not looking though space at these distant objects, but back in time.
How do you know the universe is 17 billion years old? It starts out as 250 million and is now 17 billion. Nobody will ever know how old the universe really is. Of course, this cannot prove anything. No one knows if the big bang happened. Evolution is all a cirular reasoning theory. "If something is this type, it's this old." Well how do you know how old the "types" or whatever is? "Because these objects were in the type." It's a big circle. But Creation all leads back to a master Designer, there's no proof that evolution is real. Is there proof that can make people lean towards evolution? Yes! But, scientists have already proved evolution wrong, but they're not going to admit it because 1) they'd be out of a job, 2) too many people already believe in evolution and nobody else is going to accept it. Sigh....
the Political Inquirer
Where did everything come from? Don't say, "the Big Bang." To say that everything came from the Big Bang is like saying babies come from maternity wards--true in a narrow sense, but it hardly goes back far enough. Where did the stuff that went "bang" come from? What was it? Why did it bang?
This provides some more evidence that the Big Bang is not a very good theory to predict things in the universe. By helping to debunk the Big Bang, it also helps the theory plasma physicists such as Hannes Alfven and Eric Lerner that requires no absolute age of the universe.
t ml
Essentially, their theory says that the universe is criss-crossed with plasma strings, which celestial objects cluster around. This forms groupings of galaxies, clusters, superclusters, etc. Its advantage in regard to this article is that this theory allows for objects older than the 'Big Bang', since it never occurred.
For more information about Alfven: http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/people/alfven.h
"For success, it is essential you have Thunderball Fists." "I can have such a thing?" "That's right. Thunderball Fists."
The preprint of their article is available here if anyone wants to take a look.
Idol Star Astronomer
I was not aware that anything had been proven wrong..... Not Evolution Not Zap Pow.... Please let me know when this happened
D.A.K.D.A.E.---- Deny all Knowledge, Destroy All Evidence
Couldn't this be a shape hint ? :)
I think 3 stars like this would actualy give us a complete 'scan' of the universe...
I don't know how we got to estimate universe age (I'd like someone to tell me btw).
But if it is not based on geometric obervations but rather.. I don't know.. actual background radiation or something...
Than maybe the universe age isn't the only thing to consider if we see an apparently 'too old' galaxy, but rather a funny shape issue.
I was precisely trying to find some clues as how to find 'observable evidences' for a funny shaped Universe that 's why I thought this might be one.
If our Universe is like a 3d surface bending on a 4th (geometric, not time) dimension (it's still 3d but it is closed over itself like a sphere for example). then I expect som funny things to happen:
A star could glow, its wave front should expand sphericaly ad infinitum to the point its energy density is so low it's undetectable (too far) losing a lot of energy on its way (because of objects on its way), but then, it should a t a time of its travel reach the universe 'equator' (if Universe doesn't expand faster than light, but I don't think it does since i can see stars) and then starts to contract again until it reaches its oposite point on the surface. there, it should interfere with itself and continue its way but inverted.
On its way back, it could then appear to be a regular star, although it would in fact be a 'mirror image' of it.
Wouldn't that image lie on its age/distance ? (not sure how we really know its age/distance right now, so it might be a dumb supposition.. I really don't know). Anyway... it could be interesting toobserve such a star because it would contain information of the whole universe