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Astronomer Discovers the Most Distant Stars Ever Observed From Earth

Cryolithic writes to tell us The Vancouver Sun is reporting that a University of B.C. astronomer recently used NASA's Hubble telescope to see a cluster of stars one billion light-years from Earth, the farthest stars ever observed from Earth. From the article: "That's interesting, he explains, because given that light travels at a finite speed -- 300,000 km a second -- the light emitted from the star cluster he and Kalirai saw was emitted one billion years ago. That means the cluster as it appeared to them two months ago was the way it looked one billion years ago. In other words, they were looking one billion years back in time."

20 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Looking back in time. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    "In other words, they were looking one billion years back in time."

    So, when I look at the sun, I am actually looking back in time 8 minutes?

    Deep.

    1. Re:Looking back in time. by User+956 · · Score: 5, Funny

      So, when I look at the sun, I am actually looking back in time 8 minutes?

      Yes, and apparently, 8 minutes ago hurts like a motherfucker.

      --
      The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
    2. Re:Looking back in time. by Gospodin · · Score: 4, Funny

      When you read Slashdot, you are looking back in time approx. 1.7e-9 seconds*, assuming you sit about 50cm from your screen.

      * May be more if you're reading a dupe.

      --
      ...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
    3. Re:Looking back in time. by Enzo+the+Baker · · Score: 5, Funny

      Anyone who has ever watched a Roadrunner vs. Wyle E. Coyote cartoon knows this.

      --
      I may twist orthodoxy to partly justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.
  2. Wait... by Draconix · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ric Romero is submitting articles to Slashdot now?

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    By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
  3. Can you say that again? by chill · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't get the whole "back in time" thing. Saying it 3 different ways in a 3 sentence blurb isn't quite enough. Is this, like, before the Great Flood? :-)

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  4. Age by Dr.+Cody · · Score: 3, Funny

    In other words, these pictures are one billion years, two months old.

  5. Re:Does it count... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's like asking "Is it one billion light years from New York or one billion light years from Chicago?"

  6. Re:paraphrasing Douglas Adams by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Funny

    You kids and your fancy record albums! In my day, it was explained to me that the Sun was the hole in the middle of a gramophone cylinder, and the Earth was the trunk in my room at the orphanage in which I kept my knickerbockers, and the farthest planet Neptune would probably be down by the paper mills where all us kids would look for work. Now get off my lawn!

  7. Re:it travels as fast as it travels by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Funny

    For a complete vacuum, it certainly has a lot of stuff in it to look at.

          Someone forgot to clean out the filter? My vacuum filter always gets full of gunk after a while...

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  8. wow. remedial time travel by searchr · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh.my.god. Using those figures, according to my calculations, it takes the light from the sun about eight minutes to reach Earth. That means, we aren't seeing the Sun NOW, we're seeing the sun eight minutes in the PAST. So everything we're seeing, everything with the Sun's light on it, is actually touching the past! I'm.. I'm touching the PAST. Looking through TIME.

    these are really good brownies.

  9. 1bil lightyears is too far for me to understand by fuo · · Score: 2, Funny

    how many football fields is that?

    1. Re:1bil lightyears is too far for me to understand by twifosp · · Score: 2, Funny
      A football field is 300 yards.

      There are 1093.6 yards in a kilometer.

      There are 3.654 football fields in a kilometer.
      A light year is ~ 9,460,730,472,580.80 kilometers.
      There are 2,595,267,579,293.56 football fields in a light year.
      There are 2.59527E+21 or 2,595,267,579,293,560,000,000 football fields in a billion lightyears.

      Other imperial measurments you might find usefull:
      Dime widths to the lightyear: 38,448,408.68
      Buicks to the lightyear: 48,060,510,849.73
      Hamsters to the lightyear: 961,210,216.99
      Goldfish to the lightyear: 120,151,277.12
      Obese Americans (Average of obese waist size) to the lightyear: 11,053,917,495.44
      'Your Momma's so fat' to the lightyear: 6

  10. Re:it travels as fast as it travels by heinousjay · · Score: 2, Funny

    I always assumed that whatever speed light traveled at was the speed of light.

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    Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
  11. Billion-year-old alien computer message decoded! by kale77in · · Score: 4, Funny

    From the article:

    "Astronomers further said that they had decoded part of a computer signal from the star systems in question, possibly a signal 1,000,000,000 years old! It said, 'Please wait, Java loading.'"

  12. Ha .. ha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    a University of B.C. astronomer recently used NASA's Hubble telescope to see a cluster of stars one billion light-years from Earth, the farthest stars ever observed from Earth.

    How appropriate that is....

  13. Re:Assuming the Speed of Light is Constant by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 2, Funny
    A previous ./ story talked about indications that the speed of light may in fact be slowing down.

    It's a good thing they're going to increase the speed of light in 2208.

  14. Nah, you cant look back for more than 6000 years by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2, Funny

    The whole universe was just created 6000 years ago. That star 1 billion light years away is also just 6000 years old. It was created along with the stream of photons stretching all the way from here to there so that it appears to shine steadily. BTW all the dino fossils? they too was created 6000 years ago along with the Earth's crust. It will all be explained very clearly in my forthcoming book The Theory of Intelligent Shining. For advance copy, please send me 79.99$.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  15. Dont be fooled by this post .... by kryten_nl · · Score: 2, Funny

    Don't be fooled by this post ... the article KFG links to doesn't contain any reference to ponies or horses what so ever.

    --
    For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
  16. Re:paraphrasing Douglas Adams by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Bah, you kids and your heliocentric model of the solar system! Back in my day, the Sun rotated around the Earth and the stars were simply holes in a table cloth, and that's the way we liked it! And if you said otherwise you were labeled a witch and burned at the stake...both ways! Now get off *my* lawn!