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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."
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.
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...
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!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
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.'"
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.