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VLT Smashes Record of Farthest Known Galaxy

Posted by Hemos on from the smashing-the-records dept.

rduke15 writes "From this press release of the European Southern Observatory : 'Named Abell 1835 IR1916, the newly discovered galaxy [...] is located about 13,230 million light-years away. It is therefore seen at a time when the Universe was merely 470 million years young[...].' More details and pictures here."

2 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Re:thousand million? by Sidoine · · Score: 5, Informative

    In fact in Europe 1 billion = 1 million millions while 1000 millions is 1 milliard.

  2. It's expanding "Into" itself by rpresser · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can think of it (in mathematical terms) as a mapping of R^3 onto itself which expands distances.

    An analogy that may help:

    Take a circular rubber sheet. Draw some dots on it. Pull the sides of the rubber sheet and watch the dots separate.

    Now imagine your rubber sheet started out as an infinite plane: it is no more infinite after stretching than before, yet all distances have increased.

    Now generalize from an infinite plane to an infinite volume, and you should get the idea.