Dawn's First Light

Uosdwis writes "Scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope say they have detected light that may be from the earliest objects in the universe. If confirmed, the observation provides a glimpse of an era more than 13 billion years ago when, after the fading embers of the theorized Big Bang gave way to millions of years of pervasive darkness, the universe came alive."

Comments

Re:given

[helioquake]

Actually, according to Einstein's Principle of Equivalence, every and each person can define him/herself as the center of the Universe.

Try to verify for yourself by doing the following:

(1) get a blank sheet of paper,
(2) mark a dot (visibly large, but not terribly so) on the sheet,
(3) and then mark more dots around them,
(4) now take the sheet to a copier and copy it in the original size,
          then copy it again but with some magnification at this time
          (e.g., 125%)...be sure to print on transparency sheets.
(5) now put the magnified transparency overlaid onto the original
        (use the first marker at (2) as a reference first)...you see
          all the dots are moving away from the first dot.
(6) Now shift the reference point to another dot...choose whatever.
        You'll notice that, whatever dot you choose, the other dots
        appear to move away from it. Hence, everyone can be the center
        of the Universe.

Re:given

[KilobyteKnight]

Interesting, but flawed.

I have another thought experiment for you. Take an uninflated balloon and a marker and make little dots all over the balloon. Blow the balloon up and notice how the outside surface follows your copy machine example with all the dots moving away from each other. However, dots close to one another are moving away from each other more slowly than dots farther away.

The universe is not a 2D surface, you can't throw away the Z-axis.

Now, notice how the center of the balloon is still the center and roughly the same distance from every dot and all dots are moving away from the center at roughly the same speed (but away from each other at varying speeds). Also, you can't move any single dot to where the core of the balloon is without moving ALL the other dots in the SAME direction. You can use any dot as a reference, but none of them display the characteristics of "the center".