NASA Sees Glow of Universe's First Objects

Damek writes with news from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has captured light from what may have been the first glowing objects in the universe, light generated 14 billion years ago. From the article: "'We are pushing our telescopes to the limit and are tantalizingly close to getting a clear picture of the very first collections of objects,' said Dr. Alexander Kashlinsky... 'Whatever these objects are, they are intrinsically incredibly bright and very different from anything in existence today.' Astronomers believe the objects are either the first stars — humongous stars more than 1,000 times the mass of our sun — or voracious black holes that are consuming gas and spilling out tons of energy. If the objects are stars, then the observed clusters might be the first mini-galaxies..."

Comments

Looks like this is already being refuted

[Anonymous Coward]

by some more powerful equipment. From New Scientist Space: "Because Hubble's mirror is larger than Spitzer's, it turned up dwarf galaxies too faint for Spitzer to resolve. "Once we remove pixels in the Spitzer images corresponding to the locations of these galaxies, the background infrared light level mostly disappears," Cooray told New Scientist. 'We think, therefore, the infrared light seen in Spitzer images is mostly due to the faint infrared glow from these dwarf galaxies.'" The full article

Re:Looks like this is already being refuted

[khallow]

I've looked over the EM/plasma theories before. The cosmological scale theories might have a grain of truth, but the Solar System scale theories (eg, that comets are highly charged objects) contradict both what we see and our models of electromagnitism. Comets formed from existing material. It's quite possible that pre-solar system collisions and supernova created the features seen in the above comet material. But it's not plausible to explain this with an exotic theory that has stable highly charged objects (immersed in the solar wind which would drain away the charge) and huge, unobserved voltage potentials (the Earth and Moon vary enough in their orbits that we should experience some of this phenomena, but we don't).

And then there's the Stardust mission -- which when combined with the results of the Deep Impact mission indicate quite clearly that our early assumptions about comets were quite wrong. Scientists are now apparently trying to invent scenarios for how it could be that comets would contain exotic meteorite particles as well as particles that have clearly been formed under intense heat. Perhaps they should consider that these initial speculations were wrong in the first place. I doubt we'll see any such sanity though. More likely, we'll see additional new speculations to support the earlier unsupported speculations.

No, this is relatively modest disagreement with the models of comets and their origins.

We have already observed objects with enormous mass packed in a very small location. Maybe our "black hole" models of what happens when that much mass is packed into one place is inaccurate, but these objects do exist. And multi-dimensional models are one approach for understanding models involving forces other than gravity. For example, the first Kaluza-Klein model was a five dimensional model which was able to explain general relativity and the electromagnetic force. However, in the process it introduced a scalar field which we've never seen experimentally. So that likely indicates that the model is incorrect, but that's the only significant cost of the model. It otherwise models gravity and EM pretty well.

Re:Looks like this is already being refuted

[pln2bz]

I've looked over the EM/plasma theories before. The cosmological scale theories might have a grain of truth, but the Solar System scale theories (eg, that comets are highly charged objects) contradict both what we see and our models of electromagnitism. Comets formed from existing material. It's quite possible that pre-solar system collisions and supernova created the features seen in the above comet material. But it's not plausible to explain this with an exotic theory that has stable highly charged objects (immersed in the solar wind which would drain away the charge) and huge, unobserved voltage potentials

In my many adventures through the forums of Slashdot talking to people about Electric Universe Theory, I've run into a few people who half-educated themselves on the theory itself. It's not really any fault of your own. There is an overwhelming amount of material to go through. It took me three months of my free time to actually become even quasi-proficient in what the theory says. It appears that the problem with EU Theory isn't the theory itself -- but rather satisfying peoples' expectations that they be taught the mechanics of the universe in three hours or less while simultaneously fending off the amazingly hostile attacks from advocates of the mainstream. It appears that the desire by advocates of the gravity-dominant universe to keep out all serious competitors is stronger than any objective desire on their part to learn the truth of the universe. It is imperative that people with an interest in EU Theory not cave in to this posturing which does nothing more than limit the choices of cosmologies available to the public. There is in fact still no serious problem with Electric Universe Theory.

I agree that the faraway observations are strongest, but there is no problem with the electromagnetism of EU-style cometary theory when you understand how plasma behaves. Many people make the mistake of assuming that EU Theory is advocating an electrostatic model for cometary and planetary interactions. In fact, the solar wind would not necessarily "drain away" charge from any other plasma or body in space any more than the plasma of space would drain away the solar wind's charge. That's because plasmas naturally form what are called double-layers. From http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0510 31plasma.htm:

Plasmas form double layers between regions of different densities, temperatures or magnetic field strengths. A double layer:
(a) consists of two layers of opposite charge
(b) tends to form cellular structures with the double layer as the "cell wall." (eg. magnetosphere, photosphere, heliosphere)
(c) can form in filamentary current channels known as "Birkeland currents" (see below);
(d) can explode, as discovered in mercury rectifiers used in high-power direct-current transmission lines;
(e) can accelerate charged particles, in opposite directions up to velocities approaching the speed of light.

This is not actually exotic theory. These are fundamentals of electrodynamics and plasma physics.

(the Earth and Moon vary enough in their orbits that we should experience some of this phenomena, but we don't).

Well, if you mean that we should see the Earth's coma and tail like in a comet, that would require that the plasma surrounding the Earth be in the glow discharge mode. In reality, plasmas can and do exist in non-glow states much like a transistor has multiple operating regions. The Earth's magnetosphere exists in this state except when the aurora occurs.

If you go to the page at http://www.thunderbolts.info/t

Re:Please explain

[Gospodin]

A good way to think of it is to imagine us as living on the skin of a balloon as it is being blown up. You are moving away from every other point uniformly, but you aren't near the "edge".

In more physics-friendly language, there are only two possibilities - either the universe is open or it's closed. If it's open, then it's infinite in all directions and there is no edge (we don't think this is the case, but it's still technically possible). If it's closed, then there simply is no edge because as you travel in any direction you curve around to head back where you came from.

It might also help to realize that while the visible universe may be "only" 14 billion light years or so in radius, the longest dimension of a closed universe could be several times this number due to inflationary expansion. So we may not be seeing everything that's actually out there.

Re:1000 Times the mass of the Sun?

[neurostar]

The Sun is a pretty small star compared to others...

Right, but the 1000 times the mass would be a huge star. The most massive stars known today are on the order of 100 times the mass of our sun. So these might be stars that are ~10x larger than the largest currently observed stars.

Re:Please explain

[LionKimbro]

Ah; Excellent question.

If you look at the "known universe," it appears that we are in the exact middle, dead center, of the known universe.

When we see the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, we are seeing "the edge" of the visible universe, that we can see.

As you look further and further away from where we are, you see deeper and deeper into the past, until you see back as far as we can, where we see only the cosmic microwave background radiation, uniformly, like a sphere, in all directions.

Most astrophysicists doubt that we are at the exact middle.

The reason we can't see things beyond the visible universe, is simply because light hasn't existed long enough to get to us, from things that exist beyond the edge of our light cone of vision.

Right? If light has only existed for, say, 14.7 billion light years, then you're not going to be seeing something that's 20 billion light years away. Or 100 billion light years away.

It makes sense that, at the very edge of our vision, we see the genesis of the universe, in all directions.

Astrophysicists today do not know how large the universe is, and it may well be infinite, in all directions. Astrophysicists take this idea very seriously, as far as I understand. That said, they also take seriously the idea that it is smaller than the observable universe, and just has a wrap-around effect.

Re:IS it 14 billion or 15 billion?

[Ximok]

Technically, you could triangulate the origin of the light by using two separate cameras. From that distance calculation you do the math. We know the speed of light (Roughly 300 MegaMeters Per Second), from this we know the distance light travels in one year (A Light Year - Measurement of Distance, not time). So, we could figure out that a source of light is 14 Billion Light Years Away, Which also tells us that the Light originated 14 Billion Years ago.

Re:Almost there...

[Bill Currie]

No, the question was 6 times 9. But in base 13.

Get the papers here

[Ambitwistor]

The journal articles that go along with the story:

New Measurements of Cosmic Infrared Background Fluctuations from Early Epochs
On the Nature of the Sources of the Cosmic Infrared Background

(These were posted in the article, but only under a tiny "More info" link at the bottom that is easy to overlook.)

Re:Please explain

[Jazzer_Techie]

Right? If light has only existed for, say, 14.7 billion light years, then you're not going to be seeing something that's 20 billion light years away. Or 100 billion light years away.

You're pretty much right, up to the fact that the universe is not static. Since space itself has been expanding (at varying rates throughout the history of the universe), talking about distance is not as straightforward as it may seem. Cosmologists use many different measures of distance, each telling you something about the object. The "lookback time" is how long the light has been traveling when it gets to you. But during the transit time, the object has moved away from you as the space between expanded, so the object is not really $lookback_time number of light-years away.

Re:Please explain

[Jugalator]

And before anyone jumps in about this :-) ... The universe can do this without violating known laws of physics because it's not really the boundaries of the universe that is "moving" in the normal sense, see also here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_s pace

Links to the technical journal articles, summary

[StupendousMan]

You can read the technical papers on which this press release is based:

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0612445

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0612447

The basic idea is that the astronomers used an infrared
space telescope to take very deep images. They then tried
to remove all the obvious sources of light, and examined
the resulting "blank" images very carefully. They claim that
there are very faint sources of infrared radiation which
remain, and that the spatial correlation of these sources
is roughly what one would expect if they were young galaxies
in the very early universe.

There are limited opportunities for other astronomers
to examine the same regions with other telescopes and
at other wavelengths; that could provide evidence that
might support the claim, or weaken it (if, for example,
radio telescopes detect some of these sources and
show that they are ordinary galaxies in the relatively
nearby universe, that would weaken the claim in
the press release).

We can also just wait a decade or so for JWST, a more
powerful infrared space telescope, to observe the same
field.

Re:Please explain

[particle_fizax]

Well, I just walked out of my statistical thermodynamics final and unfortunately, I'm not sure that I can help you out any. I won't claim to be an expert in the field, but the general consensus seems to be that the universe as a system should follow the laws of thermodynamics. That being said, I'm not sure how you handle an real infinite system in regards to any of the thermodynamics laws. I mean, sure I pull spheres from infinity all the time, but really it's just a convenient cheat for us lazy physicists.

Alternatively, I think that it doesn't make much sense to think about space in terms of space. That's kind of like thinking of lollipops in terms of lollipops. I mean, sure, they're delicious. If I tell you about lollipops, you may think, "Mmm, those are delicious." But I don't know that I could say anything useful to you about lollipops strictly in the language of lollipops, whatever that means. Frankly, there's a lot of ways to mess with space (dilation, anyone?), and it doesn't seem as static a thing as I once thought it was. What happens when you stretch out space? Hmmm, more space.

My gut intuition (not that it means much) makes me think that the universe is closed and probably looped back into itself. The main reason is that it seems like a weird concept to have space just "end". If it were shaped like a balloon, for instance, maybe there's a way to avoid some disturbing delta functions of vacuum to nothingness.

Oh yeah, sorry I couldn't help. I'm done rambling now.

Re:Please explain

[lawpoop]

This might help you understand what people generally mean. ( I might be totally wrong here, so anyone more knowledgeable feel free to correct me. )

You talk about a thing that exists 3-dimensionally needing to be measured. That's fine for a thing, but space is not a thing. Space sort of *is* the measure of things. If you imagine an x-y-z axis, space *is* that axis. And in the case of infinite space, those axes go on forever. Space is not a thing; it's the, uh, space in which things exist. It's just the distance between things. It's abstract -- not really a thing, but the relationship between things.

Maybe reading some philosophy or metaphysics about 'space' would help you understand, rather than physics that already assume you understand the concept.

Re:Almost there...

[duguk]

No, it isn't.

Monkeyboi

Re:How does light distance measurement work?

[killjoe]

It's a very long series of conjectures basically. You measure the redshifts from known close star and "fixed" stars (star that don't appear to move). You come up with a series of ratios, you interpolate the distance based on redshift.

I am simplifying vastly here but you get the gist. It's about measuring close things and then using what you know about them to measure far things.

Re:Almost there...

[MillionthMonkey]

RTFA FIRST- in reality they're looking at stuff only 13.2 billion light years away, not 14 billion- which would indicate light that was older than the universe itself at 13.7 billion years old

The actual horizon is 53 billion light years away, not 13.7. Consider a photon emitted very early, when the universe was still small, that reaches Earth today. During the first year of that photon's life, it would crossed only one light year of space on its trip to us- the first one.

13.7 billion years later, that first light year has expanded like a rubber sheet to have a disproportionate contribution to the 53 billion, compared to light years that the photon covered later on, just before reaching us. You can't just multiply the total elapsed time by c. You have to actually do an integral over time for the entire trip to get the 53 billion, where the integrand is the product of c by the "stretch factor" S(t) at that point on the trip: the factor by which the space that a photon was flying through at time t has expanded by now (as considered relative to a frame where the Earth is at rest). I don't know what this function would be, but I do know it's a function of time (or more specifically, time since the Big Bang in a frame at rest with respect to the microwave background radiation).

If S(t) were fixed at 1.0, you'd expect an integral of 13.7 billion light years. But it isn't fixed at 1.0; it is always greater than that and only approaches 1.0 at the end since light years at the end of the trip haven't had much time to expand. At the start of the trip S(t) could have been very high, depending on the age of the universe at the time.

Re:Gross errors

[yoprst]

the speed of light is thought to be decreasing
Thought by whom?
That would imply that our matter had exceeded the speed of light to arrive here.
Essentialy, it has

State of the Art

[jd]

The state of the art is that the Universe is a shape. That's about as much agreement as we're likely to see for some time. Current theories range from soccer-ball shape (which would explain the extreme uniformity of the microwave background radiation without needing Inflation Theory) to a strange 12-dimensional ultra-sausage (3 dimensions are circular, time is flatish, the other 8 are curled up to almost zero size - this gives us String Theory, one of the better bets for a Grand Unified Theory but difficult to prove and in definite violation of the Keep It Simple philosophy) to a perfectly normal sphere that expands indefinitely (currently the best explanation for the calculated value for the Hubble Constant) to a dimple that will expand into a flat plane (which is the best explanation for why none of the constants seem to be, well, constant).

The current belief is that more than one of the theories is likely to be wrong, although it is entirely possible that they are all correct depending on the observer and/or universe. (In the Many Worlds theory, there is one instance of the Universe for every possible permutation of valid events that could ever occur. If this theory is correct and the shape of the Universe is dictated by events, then the shape of the Universe is determined by which branch you happen to be on at the time you do the observation. If branches can interact, this may vary between observations.)

Re:Here's the problem though...

[Ambitwistor]

If one point in space is expanding fast enough ("edge" of space) in relationship to another point (us), and then if the first object was accellerated to close to light speed velocities, away from the second point, wouldn't it appear as if the first object was moving away from the second object faster than the speed of light? Not exactly; this is an issue of relativistic addition of velocities.

The thing is, we know the speed of light within space is constant, and under normal circumstances (all that we know, anyway) can't be breached. But that isn't accounting for the displacement due to "expanding space". Is it, then, possible to observe two extremely distant objects as moving away from each other faster than the speed of light? It's possible for us to see two objects moving away from each other faster than the speed of light, even in a non-expanding universe. We just can't see them moving away from us faster than light.

Re:Please explain

[LionKimbro]

If light existed only for 14.7 billion years, then objects couldn't be farther than 14.7 billion light years, in fact, much less. As the maximum speed they could have (relative to us) is the speed of light.

No; There's no reason to believe things didn't start beyond us. Furthermore, there is the expansion of space.

That is, at the time of the big bang, my understanding is that there may have been plasma that was billions of light years away. My understanding is that the big bang refers to initial density, and to expansion. But not necessarily to a beginning in a single point.

In my defense, I refer you to a NASA site, "WMAP Cosmology 101," the part that begins with: "Please avoid the following common misconceptions about the Big Bang and expansion..."

Re:A little help here

[mgrivich]

If the universe is flat or open like a bedsheet, then it is infinite in extent, and has always been infinite in extent, or at least larger than we can see. As time passes, we have to look further away (or further back in time) to see the beginning. If the universe is closed like a balloon, then we still have to look further and further away, but we may end up looking back at our own position, just further back in time. A good, semi-technical discussion of the big bang can be found at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang. html

Re:Almost there...

[MillionthMonkey]

But surely if the universe is expanding, it should be expanding on every level (ie macro and micro).

It is expanding uniformly on all levels. An example of "micro" expansion would be an optical photon becoming a microwave photon over billions of years as space inflates. But atoms, unlike photons, only come in fixed sizes. If you try to expand an atom, or a chemical bond, by inflating the space it's in somehow, it will just contract a little to get back to the "right" size for the quantum state it is still in. Without changing the quantum state, you can't change the atom's shape or radius at all, and the ground state effectively fixes these things as a function of mass, charge, and a bunch of constants. By extension, anything made of atoms will be unaffected by inflation, for the same reason- molecular orbitals, etc. also come in fixed sizes.

An interstellar photon, OTOH, can take on a continuous range of energies, and its wavelength can be adjusted by arbitrarily tiny amounts. For this reason inflation has a long term cumulative effect on photons that is just not seen with atoms.

If the answer to the above question is yes, then what happens if the universe begins to collapse in on itself? The Universe Expansion Force would be negated, so the strength of the attraction between quarks would increase (as would the strength of the attraction between electrons and nuclei etc).

Atoms would stay the same size as they are now for the exact same reason they do now.

Re:Speed of light?

[Plankmeister]

Imagine, if you will, a very long length of elastic rope, say, 10 metres long. Take a permanent marker, and while the elastic is "at rest" make a mark on it every 10mm along its entire length. Now, find two assistants, hand each one an end of the elastic, and instruct them to "take up the slack". Now, find an ant. Place the ant on one end of the elastic. This is a very special ant, however, as it is very cooperative, and only walks in perfectly straight lines on lengths of elastic. "On your marks, set, GO!" Time him from one end of the elastic to the other. This we will call value "c". (Representing the speed of light) The 10 metre length we will call value "d". (representing the diameter of the whole universe, not just the visible part) Now that the ant is at the other end of the elastic, instruct him to turn around and repeat the process in the opposite direction. At the same time, instruct your 2 assistants to move apart, stretching the elastic as they go. Additionally, they are accelerating, taking small steps at fist, then walking, running, sprinting! Now, as you are a perfectly "external" observer, you see the ant moving at the same velocity "c" in relation to the piece of elastic he is running on. However, his frame of reference, "d", is changing with the passage of time. If the ant represents the speed of light, then quickly run to catch up with one of your assistants, then look back at the other assistant. Their relative velocity is MUCH higher than the ant's velocity. But no fundamental laws are being broken, as - to put it simply - none of those adjacent black marks you made earlier (representing "local" space) are moving apart faster than the ant. Almost, but not quite.
Now... Reset the experiment, make the elastic 1mm long, and attach each end of the elastic to two rifle bullets pointing in opposite directions. (This is INCREDIBLY stretchy elastic, trust me!) Place the ant (this one is a very very small ant!) between the bullets, not quite in the middle of the elastic, and instruct him that when the bullets are fired, he is to run at his standard speed "c" (representing the speed of light) towards the middle of the elastic. Fire the bullets... Watch and be amazed, as within a few thousands of a second, the elastic reaches 10 metres in length, and the ant, running at "light speed" has only covered 1mm or so in the same amount of time. For arguments sake, lets say the bullets each hit a target, lodging in place with the elastic still attached. This represents "now". The ant is representing a photon from the beginning of the universe and it hasn't yet reached the middle of the elastic, and won't do for probably a couple of minutes. This represents how we can only just be seeing events that occurred at the Beginning. Thanks to the inflationary properties of the early universe, we will continue to receive this light for, well, the remaining lifetime of the universe. Hard to believe that two photons that left their source perhaps a few billionths of a second apart, might (thanks to inflation) reach their target a few billion seconds apart!

Re:Almost there...

[billmcnamara]

so if I turn on my headlights of my spacecraft and i'm travelling at the speed of light, will they work? http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/S peedOfLight/headlights.html

Re:Why energy escapes black holes?

[whitroth]

Matter falling into the black hole, before it reaches the event horizon, gains an immense amount of energy in the falling in, and reradiates some of it. Also, black holes do evaporate through quantum tunneling (which is why there aren't any small ones around - they go BOOM that way).

          mark

Hawking radiation

[frogstar_robot]

We can't observe the hole itself but we can observe the effect it has on matter that hasn't fallen into it's event horizon. Matter will not fall straight into a hole; it will spiral in. As it is spiraling in, it will emit X-rays as a sort of death cry. Also black holes have magnetic fields and spin. A black hole actively feeding will ionize matter and some of this charged matter can be caught in the holes magnetic field and ejected from its poles as bright jets. It is a misconception to think of a black hole as a sort of cosmic vacuum cleaner that will suck down everything. A black hole has no more gravity than the mass that gave birth to it. A black hole can be safely orbited for instance. But the mass of a hole is so intensely concentrated that very exotic tidal effects are caused closer in to the hole. Get too close and yes even light will not escape. Get almost too close and very very weird (but predictable and observable) things happen.

Since there can never truly be such a thing as a true vacuum black holes can even evaporate. Since absolute zero can only be approached (but never reached) any given volume of space has a quantity of energy available within it. This energy can give rise to pairs of particles once thresholds are reached. The particles are formed in pairs because properties like spin and charge are conserved. This matter does not come from nothing! It is formed at the expense of available energy in the vicinity. If a pair of particles forms in the vicinity of a black hole's event horizon then one of the pair can fall into the hole while the other sluggishly makes it's way away from the hole. This happens at the expense of the energy of the hole itself so if the black hole isn't being fed with other sources then it will shrink a trifle. Large black holes have event horizons that appear barely curved at subatomic scales; this means that large black holes lose mass very slowly in this way. Even a hole with a few times the sun's mass will last far longer than the universe has existed to date. Smaller holes have more curvature on local scales and lose energy very very quickly. This is why the prospect of forming a hole in a particle accelerator isn't particularly scary.