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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.
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()?