Slashdot Mirror
Astronomers Find Stars 7 Billion Light Years Away
StArSkY writes "The Age has an article about an international team of astronomers that has discovered 14 galaxies, opening up a new era of 'galaxy hunting'. Using an infrared instrument in Chile (the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope ) — the researchers have been able to look through the glare of 20 Quasar's to identify previously obscured galaxies. 'Light from the newly found galaxies comes from the time the universe was about 6 billion years old, less than half its current age. By studying the light, the researchers have determined they are starburst galaxies that form lots of new stars -- the equivalent of 20 suns a year. Dr Murphy, who began working on the project while a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, described the results as a great leap forward. The findings have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. '"
I remember reading about star-making galaxies and how the stresses of gravity were used to "tear" space apart and create matter from the resulting energy differential. I wonder if that's similar to these starburst galaxies.
Wouldn't it be nice to live longer than our measly 70-90 years and be able to watch the progression of our knowledge? Reading this kind of article always makes me regret that I was perhaps born this early in humanity's history.
Hmmm, is this far enough?
The point of the article is not that the galaxies were 7 billion light years away, there have been galaxies observed over 10 billion light years from us.
The real story is that these galaxies were in front of quasars and the infrared technique has now allowed observation of them.
If we are seeing them 7 billion light years away, and we are 4.5 billion light years old, that means they won't see us coming for another 2.5 billion years. Oh the poor bastards.
Come on, Zonk, learn how to use an apostrophe.
We start tomorrow.
I have only done this once before, so you will be responsible for bringing your own guns and supplies.
Isn't it conceivable that light coming from such a distance may not be traveling in a straight line? ESPECIALLY since there are 20 quasars between here and the place we assume the galaxies to be. Quasars would exert powerful gravitational pulls like black holes which theoretically should bend any light passing them. Is it possible these galaxies are not actually as far as 10 billion light year away after all?
If those stars still exist... If they do, they must have changed quite a bit before we received data from them...
Hello ! this is me emitting radio signals from a 7 billion light years away planet, come and join me for dinner, what do you expect to find when you arrive, even if you could get there instantly ? ;-))
I mean, given Einstein "curving of the universe", we could even be looking at ourselves 7 billion years ago ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
a distant galaxy, far far away... Score: 1, Redundant- That labeling seems accurate.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Have you considered that you may be born at the very end of humanities history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
This is old news. These stars were around 7 Billion years ago.
There is no "center" of the universe. You're probably confused by the popular image of the big bang that shows a point of light in the vast darkness that explodes into the universe.
But there is no "vast darkness" outside the universe, by definition the universe is everything. There is no "outside the universe" (of course that makes it hard to do an animation of the big bang on TV).
Every point in the universe is the "center". It's just that the "center" has smeared out across the whole universe as it has expanded from the big bang. On a large scale, everything is moving away from everything else.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Here's an analogy I always like to clarify how the universe expands.
Imagine that the universe is like the rubber surface of a balloon. Note that we only consider the actual space ON surface to be the universe. Now as the balloon balloon expands, the distance between any two points on the surface increases. But there is no center of the universe, i.e. no reference point ON the surface of the balloon that is special in any way. Of course, the surface of the balloon is a 2D space, and our universe is at least 3 dimensional, or perhaps 11 dimensional, according to some theories. And to describe our expanding balloon, we also needed to imagine an extra dimension... uh oh, sorry, now I'm making things complicated again. Anyway, I hope you get the picture.
assignment != equality != identity
Yeah, and I suppose you can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Yeah, that's a popular analogy.
Then some use to say "but you can go INWARDS into the balloon, to its center", but since an expanded balloon is like an expanded universe, that analogy would be to going back in time. And since space and time is most definitely intertwined in the universe, that would also require going back in space. So while you can go back into the center of that balloon alright, what you would end up with would just be the (supposed, maybe not on a quantum mechanical level) singularity of the big bang.
I'm not sure if that way of thinking is entirely correct since I'm just an amateur though, but I think it suits the analogy pretty well.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I disagree somewhat with the statement that "it isn't even about right or wrong". That is true in the moral sense, but not in the sense of "Are we right about how this works, or not?"
Some years ago, Isaac Asimov wrote a short book titled "The Relativity of Wrong". It is an excellent book, highly recommended reading. In it, he describes how someone lectured him on how little we understand about the universe. This was his reply:
"... when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
So maybe we do not have all the answers. And the answers we do have, in an absolute sense, may not turn out to be "right" in the long run. But as we learn more, every year, they become less wrong than before...
In case I did not make the point adequately, here is a link to an excerpt from the book:
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm