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

Please explain

[Gabrill]

If it took 14 billion years for the light to reach us, and the universe is 14 billion years old, does that mean that we are on the very edge of the expanding universe? Does that mean that we should be able to "see" the outside edge of it?

Re:Please explain

[rudeboy1]

OK. Been meaning to have this conversation with someone in the know, but I'll have to make do with slashdotters (I keed, I keed!)
    I understand what you are saying, mostly. But, define this concept of infinite space. To me, anything that exists 3 dimensionally must have physical measurements, and thusly, a point in which it ceases to geographically exist. Saying the universie is infinite seems (respectfully, I'm not trying to troll here) like trying to finish that science paper early so you can go to sleep. Plus, the theory that the universe is expanding, to me, immediately brings to mind that it is going from a smaller size to a larger size, in which case, the previous argument begs more attention. I always try to imagine, or ask myself, what is beyond the universe.
    That's usually about the point I go crosseyed, say to hell with it, and go play video games.

Re:Please explain

[complete loony]

An article that came up a couple of days ago, suggested that the universe might be shaped like a dodecahedron, where each face is "joined" to it's rotated opposite face.

I found this hard to visualise until I realised that dodecahedrons tessellate perfectly in 3D space. So just picture a bunch of glass dodecahedrons stacked together with invisible seams, stretching to infinity, except there's only really 1 of them, and the rest are just reflections.

*If* the universe is closed like this, it *could* be a lot smaller than it looks. We'd only know for sure if we could see a few more Milky Way's (or some other obvious structure) in our vicinity.

Re:Please explain

[LionKimbro]

Keep in mind that my understanding is that of a lay person keeping track of things by wikipedia, and occasional conversation with live scientist. But here's what I understand, so far.

Space is expanding, but it's expanding in the sense that the distance between galaxies is growing larger. Not that it's expanding out "into" something, or anything like that.

Imagine an infinite universe, existing in all directions, filled with galaxies.

Now, take the same space, but multiplying all (x,y,z) coordinates by, say, 1.2. (Note that, this transformation works the same, regardless of where you pick your origin!)

Now, the various forces hold atoms and planets and stars and galaxies together, so the galaxies, stars, planets, people, plants, themselves, don't get bigger. Only the space between galaxies.

This is a model of an expanding, infinite universe. It would have no "edge," it would just keep going.

The objects in the infinite universe have finite dimensions. But the space itself, may be infinite. Again, we don't know, but it's a possibility.

I ask myself: "Did the big bang necessarily occur out of a single point?" Because, you can have incredible densities, and a "bang" (by expanding universe,) but not necessarily have everything coming out of a single point. Mathematically, too, you can actually map all of the Real numbers, 1:1, in the space between 0.0 through 1.0. "Is it possible that the universe began with super-high density, in all directions?" I need to ask an astrophysicist this question, don't take my thoughts on this one.

Re:1000 Times the mass of the Sun?

[LiquidCoooled]

Google video has a vivid short movie relating the size of planets to the larger stars we know about.

"W CEPHEI" wins this video at 288194 times the size of the earth!

Speed of light?

[NotoriousHood]

I don't understand how even if we are on opposite sides of this expanding balloon (or whatever other expansion analogy you want to pick) how this can exceed the speed of light. I can't see another way for light from the birth of our universe to reach us only now.

*thinks about it more*

Nope, doesn't make sense to me.

Re:IS it 14 billion or 15 billion?

[mandelbr0t]

The error margin is low, based on our ability to accurately determine the wavelength of the radiation in question (I'm pretty sure it's awfully accurate). It was described to me this way (from Trefil's Reading the Mind of God): We are able to recreate in laboratories the conditions in the universe to within 10e-33 seconds of the Big Bang. Therefore, we know the exact temperature of the radiation emitted from the Big Bang. Assuming no other variables which could increase the temperature of the background radiation and knowing the current wavelength of the background radiation around us (it's in the Microwave range), we can tell the light is 14 billion years old by its wavelength. I hope I didn't screw that up :)

mandelbr0t

A little help here

[alex_guy_CA]

I've never understood this. If light from the beginning of the universe started traveling at the speed of light 14 billion years ago, how can we be out ahead of it to see it? At what point did the particles that became us move out from the beginning of the universe faster than light, so we can now turn back to the direction from which we came and see what should be very far ahead of us. No this is not a troll. It's a real question. Thanks in advance.

Re:Almost there...

[complete loony]

No. In the grandparent's explanation c did not change. It was the distance between 2 points that changed, not the speed of light. The early photon took a year to travel from point A to point B, if it was reflected back again it will take longer to get back to point A because the universe has expanded and point A is now further away. Point A may be practically unreachable by that photon as the expansion of the universe keeps moving point A further away.

v = d / t

The velocity of a photon (c) is a constant. Space is malleable, and both d and t can change.

Re:Almost there...

[snarkth]

  The expansion of space itself is not constrained by the speed of light, only the matter/energy within it.

  Read Inflation for Beginners which is an excellent, relatively (argh) non-technical treatment of the subject.

  Relevant quote: "One of the peculiarities of inflation is that it seems to take place faster than the speed of light. Even light takes 30 billionths of a second (3 x 10(exp-10) sec) to cross a single centimetre, and yet inflation expands the Universe from a size much smaller than a proton to 10 cm across in only 15 x 10(exp-33) sec. This is possible because it is spacetime itself that is expanding, carrying matter along for the ride; nothing is moving through spacetime faster than light, either during inflation or ever since. Indeed, it is just because the expansion takes place so quickly that matter has no time to move while it is going on and the process "freezes in" the original uniformity of the primordial quantum bubble that became our Universe."

  I don't know what you mean by "information coming from apparently nowhere."

  snarkth

Re:State of the Art

[LionKimbro]

I'm not confident that the shape is necessarily bound, like you're indicating. The Wikipedia article, for instance, gives several alternatives, but doesn't say that scientists are pointing at one or the other.

I have seen articles presenting arguments for the different sorts of shapes that you are presenting, but I haven't seen anything saying, "But we know for sure, it's not infinite in all directions." To the contrary, I have seen many reputable sites (such as Hubble research sites, NASA sites, and so on,) that say, in effect, "We don't know; It may well be infinite in all directions."

If you like, I can dig up the links; I've been collecting them.

Re:Almost there...

[AusIV]

Douglass Adams? Who is he to claim the answer to life, the universe and everything isn't 42?

In my Discrete Mathematics class, I learned that a "hard" problem is one where, if all atoms in the universe were a super-computer processing at the speed of light, it would take several times the age of the universe to solve using a brute force method.

In my physics class, I learned that one might theoretically be able to create a universe by imploding certain particles. The result would be a universe that would expand inwards upon itself, and that universe would exist only for a fleeting moment in our universe.

Now, if one could manipulate the creation of a universe such that every atom in said universe were a super computer processing at the speed of light, and could extract the result once that universe had poofed out of existence, then "hard" problems could be solved using brute force in a miniscule amount of time. As with any method of computing, this would eventually become the norm even for problems that weren't "hard". Our universe is simply a computer calculating 6x9 in base 13, no matter what some mere humorist says.