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Discovering Galaxies Near and Far

Posted by timothy on from the distant-neighbors dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "Researchers using Japan's Subaru telescope in Hawaii have discovered a galaxy 12.9 billion light-years from Earth -- the most distant found to date. The latest finding extends the distance of the known farthest galaxies from Earth by about 3 million light-years." Toward the other end of the scale, JamesD_UK writes "Astronomers at the 2Mass project appear to have found the closest galaxy to the milky way yet, overtaking the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. The galaxy is only 25,000 light years away and is being torn appart in a collision with the milky way. More information on the The Two Micron All Sky Survey is available here."

14 comments

  1. More to come by Jump · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is interesting, because the standard theory for cosmology predicts that galaxies like the Milky Way are build from merging small galaxies. However, only few remnants of this merger events have been found so far.

  2. "Bad drivers" by E1v!$ · · Score: 1

    I am NEVER going to let a gallaxy drive my car. 'seems they're always colliding.

    "This is also an important discovery because it highlights that the Milky Way is not in its middle age - it is still forming."

    Sarcasm: Gosh, and here I thought we only had 20 billion years before our migration. I can go back to sleep.

    Opinion: It's a silly thought. Our gallaxy could be much older, in it's middle or late age and just have become 'the big boy on the block'. Drawing conclusions like that is highly speculative, and not a good way to do science.

    1. Re:"Bad drivers" by jpop32 · · Score: 1

      Opinion: It's a silly thought. Our gallaxy could be much older, in it's middle or late age and just have become 'the big boy on the block'. Drawing conclusions like that is highly speculative, and not a good way to do science.

      Yeah, E1v!$, you tell 'em like it is! Silly guys at the Royal Astronomical Society and dudes from Strasbourg Observatory in France obviously haven't got a clue, and engage in bad science. Surely the King of rock'n'roll knows better.

      So, anyway, what's it like, up there, on Mars?

    2. Re:"Bad drivers" by E1v!$ · · Score: 1

      A little hard to breath but the view is nice.

      As to the RSA and the SOF... Just a few years before a patent clerk warped the fabric of space time, a keynote speaker for the nobel prize said, "The future of the Nobel prize lies in the Nth decimal place."

      Degrees are a way of limiting thought down 'known' constructive channels. I believe real progress comes from creative individuals. It is the learned, 'creative' scientist who has the greatest potential to examine a situation and derive a constructive point of view.

      In my experience most scientists (like most individuals) don't have a large degree of creativity.

      Besides, up here on O Mons I can do with a magnified pocket mirror in 5 minutes what it takes those boys in France 10 weeks and 50 tons of metal to accomplish.

  3. Go Milkyway go ! by clausiam · · Score: 1

    Earthperson to alien from newly discovered close galaxy as it is being torn apart:
    My galaxy is stronger than your galaxy - na-na-na-na-boo-boo

  4. Subaru telescope by pmz · · Score: 1


    Finally, telescopes will make a name for themselves in the rally circuit.

    --
    Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
    1. Re:Subaru telescope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except for Subaru Baja, which SUCKS for offroad. The fender flied out after a few bumps on the mud rides.

  5. How old is the universe supposed to be? by SuuSt · · Score: 1

    I can't remember the number. I'm just wondering because while the speed our two galaxies are traveling appart (us and the one that's 12.9 billion light years away) could be 2 times the speed of light - 1 it probably isn't. Either way if we can find the two most distant galaxies from each other (as far as we can see) and factor in their speed and acceleration we could say "The Universe is at least this old.

    Just curious...

    1. Re:How old is the universe supposed to be? by oni · · Score: 2, Informative

      scientists currently believe the universe to be around 14 billion years old. Things which are too far away for us to see, even if we had an infinitely powerful telescope, are said to lie beyond the light horizon.

      As to your question about relative speed, remember that you will always measure the speed of light as 3 * 10^8 or 3E+8 meters per second no matter what. So, if a galaxy was heading away from me very quickly, and I could measure the speed of photons from stars in that galaxy as they passed by, I would find that they are going the 3E+8 m/s. If you and I are in spaceships traveling away from each other at close to the speed of light I shine a flashlight at you, you will measure the speed of the photos and find they are going 3E8 m/s. C is a constant. It does not depend on relative motion.

      Instead of apearing slower, the light would be redshifted.

    2. Re:How old is the universe supposed to be? by SuuSt · · Score: 2, Interesting

      For what (little) it's worth my point was that two objects could travel away from each other with a relative speed of (2*C)-1 i.e. if they're both traveling near the speed of light, relative to each other they will be moving near twice the speed of light. Therefore if two objects were always moving at that speed (or at least since the begining of the universe) and are 14 billion light years apart, it must have taken slightly over 7 billion years for them to get to that location since the big bang requires that they must have been at least somewhat close together (give or take a few hundred million light years).

      Anyway, the point being that if we can dig up two objects in space which are (I'm making up a number) 20 billion light years apart then we can say the universe is no younger than 10 billion years old. We can say it's older if we can figure out how fast those objects are moving relative to each other. So (again I'm making up numbers) if we have our two 20 billion light years separated objects and they are moving at half the speed of light away from each other (seems reasonable) then we would be able to say the universe is no younger than 40 billion years old.

    3. Re:How old is the universe supposed to be? by falxx · · Score: 0

      iirc, the way we make out how old the universe is, is by calculating with the temperature of "thin air", or the vacuum of space. This temperature has been going down ever since Big Bang, and is now at something like -272 Celsius degrees.

      this article will prolly give you some more info on how we calculate the age of the universe...

      --
      falxx
    4. Re:How old is the universe supposed to be? by Scott+Carnahan · · Score: 1

      For what (little) it's worth my point was that two objects could travel away from each other with a relative speed of (2*C)-1 i.e. if they're both traveling near the speed of light, relative to each other they will be moving near twice the speed of light.

      Okay, but your point is wrong. Relative speeds do not add like real numbers. Rather, if you were to fix a frame and let two bodies move in opposite directions at speeds a and b (written as fractions of the speed of light in a vacuum, i.e. between 0 and 1), then in each of the bodies' frames, the other is moving away at speed (a+b)/(1+ab). You should notice three things about this formula:

      • This number is less than 1 as long as a and b are less than 1. This is expected, since special relativity dictates that massive objects can never reach the speed of light.
      • When a and b are very small (e.g. the speeds we see in everyday life), then the ab in the denominator becomes imperceptible, and speeds appear to add normally.
      • It is just the hyperbolic tangent addition formula from trig (okay, you don't need to notice this). This is because the frame shift is just a Lorentz transformation, and adding velocities is equivalent to adding angles in Lorentz space.

      It might be worth your while to find a text on special relativity.

      --
      "Your notation sucks!" -- Serge Lang (1927-2005)
  6. The View from Afar by oni · · Score: 1

    I wonder how many intelligent races in other galaxies have looked at our humble home and said "yep, there's a great example of a collision between a large galaxy and a small galaxy" I wonder how many times we've been featured on the cover of some alien's version of a popular astronomy magazine.

    We'll never know of course but it's interesting to think about. Recently the Hubble Heritage project published a particularly good image of M104. Take a look at that picture. You can't even see individual stars - there are so many of them. Imagine some other race looking at an image like this one, but an image of the Milky Way. They couldn't even see our sun, let alone this microscopic spec of dust that orbits it. I think it would seem pretty silly to them that we slit each other's throats fighting over real estate they can't even see, when there'd obviously be plenty for everyone if we'd just work together. I don't mean to be sappy even though that clearly was. It's just that sometimes astronomy really puts things into perspective.