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Astronomers Detect the Earliest Galaxies
FiReaNGeL writes "Astronomers, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, have uncovered a primordial population of compact and ultra-blue galaxies that have never been seen before. They are from 13 billion years ago, just 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang. These newly found objects are crucial to understanding the evolutionary link between the birth of the first stars, the formation of the first galaxies, and the sequence of evolutionary events that resulted in the assembly of our Milky Way and the other 'mature' elliptical and majestic spiral galaxies in today's universe."
Old news!
I wonder when we'll find the earliest possible ones now. I always thought it took longer for them to form stars, etc.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
Can anyone confirm the applicability of Rule 34 to "mature" galaxies? Inquiring minds have noticed that it applies for almost anything else called mature!
I suspect I have identified such objects from submillimeter observations http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.1666 but it is very good to see a more robust population identified here.
Is 600 million years long enough to develop a complete galaxy? I'd think that might be too short for even a solor system to develop.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
So now the "scientists" are even saying that the galaxies come from from monkeys?! Blasphemers!
Big Deal. I can draw this crap in Photoshop for a lot less than the millions these jokers spend... Write me a check NASA!
The Cake is a Lie!
"Stars cannot evolve! DNA proves it!"
My understanding of cosmology is at best limited, but shouldn't these galaxies appear red-shifted to the extreme? They are furthest and hence should be moving the away from us at an extremely fast pace. Is the name Ultra-blue restricted to element analysis based on spectrum? I'm just confused about the blue light.
In theory, at the very edge of universe, is it possible that the primordial light has yet made itself visible? if someone could .. in theory.. travel there, would they be able to see the very creation itself?
I'm waiting for the next sets of clusters before dating The Universe. It will be tragic news to only find this one cluster - that's going to mean we are the furthest flung cluster.
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...
I wonder if Luke saw them.
I know a lot of people use the term "evolutionary" as a synonym for "gradual" or "slow" but when I think of evolution, I think of the specific process of mutations and reproduction by which a population changes over time. Unless there's something new about galaxies I've never heard of, I don't understand why the term "evolutionary" is the best word to describe the development of the early universe. (Or anything at astronomical scales that I can think of.)
The requested URL
Shouldn't they be just as close (looking) as other galaxies, if the universe was so much smaller early in its life? I've never understood how this works. Does it have to do with the rate of universal expansion being "faster" than the speed of light?
It's MY copypasta.
I wrote it.
I'll use it whenever I see "sexconker" used.
Although I generally believe that the less said about sexconker, the better, I do feel obligated to say a few things about sexconker's scabrous maneuvers. First off, sexconker is the embodiment of everything petty in our lives. Every grievance, every envy, every tasteless ideology finds expression in sexconker. While you or I might find it natural to want to deliver him from his appalling ignorance, we must fight for what is right. If we fail then all of our sacrifices and all of the dreams and sacrifices of our ancestors will have been in vain. The key is to realize that even if one isn't completely conversant with current events, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that sexconker's prognoses are silly to the core. If you don't believe me, see for yourself.
It is as if we were safely on the bank of a raging river, enjoying a picnic with our friends and family, when a bunch of lewd vulgarians came along and threw us into the river. Not only must we struggle to avoid drowning in the raging torrent of sexconker-sponsored mysticism, but we must crawl out of the river before we can call your attention to the problem of bumptious thieves. He is completely mistaken if he believes that all it takes to start a rabbit farm is a magician's magic hat. I would undoubtedly not have thought it possible that we must act against injustice, whether it concerns drunk driving, domestic violence, or even cannibalism, in such a way that there is nothing he can do about it except learn to live with the fait accompli, but it's true. Right is right and wrong is wrong. However true that is, people used to think I was exaggerating whenever I said that sexconker's love of demagogism and irrationalism gives a new, perverse dimension to the old adage, De gustibus non est disputandum. After seeing sexconker toss sops to the egos of the aberrant these same people now realize that I wasn't exaggerating at all. In fact, they even realize that if we set the record straight then the sea of sadism, on which sexconker so heavily relies, will begin to dry up.
Okay, I admit that sexconker's equivocations are made of the same spirit that accounts for the majority of the problems we face in this world. But sexconker says that all any child needs is a big dose of television every day. Yet he also wants to condone universal oppression. Am I the only one who sees the irony there? I ask because he is known for walking into crowded rooms and telling everyone there that superstition is no less credible than proven scientific principles. Try, if you can, to concoct a statement better calculated to show how lawless sexconker is. You can't do it. Not only that, but I am tired of hearing or reading that everything is happy and fine and good. You know that that is simply not true.
Who is sexconker to say that censorship could benefit us? Imagine people everywhere embracing his claim that he values our perspectives. The idea defies the imagination. In order to look at our situation realistically and from a viewpoint that takes in the whole picture we must put to rest the animosities that have kept various groups of people from enjoying anything other than superficial unity. And that's just the first step. Remember, if sexconker would abandon his name-calling and false dichotomies it would be much easier for me to force sexconker into early retirement.
This is not wild speculation. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is documented fact. The tone of sexconker's statements is so far removed from reality I find myself questioning what color the sky must be in sexconker's world. sexconker's irresponsible bons mots oppose the visceral views of 98 percent of the nation's citizens. News of this deviousness must spread like wildfire if we are ever to rally good-hearted people to the side of our cause. Does anybody else feel the way I do, or am I alone in my disgust with sexconker?
The corresponding Hubble NewsCenter article includes more details and more, larger images.
Ok, I admit I don't know a lot about this subject, but if they are seeing this far into the "past", they have to be looking in one direction right? I assume that the Big Bang started at one point. So therefore, there must be one spot in the sky that they are looking at, and thus the "spot" that the universe came into existence.
Is this spot in the sky widely known? Where is it? And assuming the explosion would be spherical, would we ever be able to see galaxies that shot off in the other directions?
In fact, they are spread out somewhat in appearance because there is no "vanishing point" as you might have in a drawing with a road or rail tracks. The smaller universe of that time has to be spread over the same amount of sky so there is some magnification to make this happen. Try putting different redshifts in here http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html and look at how the scale changes (kpc/" is kiloparsecs per arcsecond). You can plot it on some paper and see how it changes.
It has to do with the expanding universe, period. Take a balloon and draw a bunch of regularly spaced dots on it with a marker. Now inflate the balloon. The dots all get farther away from each other. Moreover, there is no "center" to the expansion that lies on the surface of the balloon -- no one point can be said to be the center from which all other points move away. In this analogy, the speed of light would be the maximum speed at which the dots could move about on the surface of the balloon -- this is totally unrelated to the expansion of the balloon itself.
We're not spots on a balloon, we're currants in an expanding pudding.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I am NOT a physisist nor astronomer, but I am currious.
If the light was emmited from these galaxies when the univers was roughly 600 to 800 million years old. Assuming that the substance from the big bang could not move faster than the speed of light. The universe could not have been more than 1.2 to 1.6 billion light years across. I am fairly confused about why this radiant energy didn't pass our relative position in the universe a very long time ago.
So, my question is...
How is it possible that we can still recieve the light from these galaxies?
- We know that the universe started expanding from a single point.
- We also know that there are galaxies which are billions of light-years away from us.
- This implies that the universe must have
expanded faster than the speed of light after the big-bang explosion.
I cant wrap my head around that. How is faster than light expansion possible?
So you mean like 4000 years old?
I'm not certain how accurate the following information is, but I find the suggestion from the following quote on CNN to be a serious limitation to the project:
"According to Villard, the archive from Hubble contains more than 500,000 pictures that can be accessed by the world's 6,000 astronomers. The data from the Ultra Deep Field have been analyzed by at least five international teams of astronomers, he said."
Why isn't the archive open to everyone? Aren't there more than 6,000 astronomers in the world? Wouldn't it be advantageous to open the archive to fresh eyes and new analysis?
...speak of these galaxies as if they currently exist? If these galaxies are 11-13 billion light years away, haven't they since morphed into mature galaxies (or even moved even further away from us)?
In any event, all of this is rather fascinating to a non-astronomer. It's truly mind-boggling to be looking at images of an event that happened many billions of years ago...
Those galaxies have had a lot of time to develop life. Maybe prioritize that direction for SETI...
As we observe objects at greater and greater distances, they have to keep revising their age-estimate of the universe. In the end, I think that they will eventually conclude the universe is infinitely vast, and infinitely old. This of course implies that either the all mass in the universe has infinitesimal density, or there is infinite mass, distributed more or less evenly in infinite space, of which we can only observe a small portion.
Difficult as this may be to contemplate, I believe that since, mathematically, n*INFINITY=INFINITY, for all positive real 'n', it is possible for x to equal infinity, y to equal infinity, and because infinity is an EXCLUDED endpoint of the real number system, and therefore NOT a real number, x can be UNEQUAL to y. So we can have infinite mass, distributed in an infinite volume, in a universe with neither beginning nor end.
What amazes me is how physicists, looking down their noses at the literal interpretation of the various creation myths, (such as the Young Earth crowd,) while embracing a theory (which is no more than a belief, really, with a different authority appealed to) that the universe was manufactured by a supreme particle. They've changed the details of the story, but for some reason, it seems people just cannot manage to wrap their heads around the idea of there being something without a "before there was".
So if they are allowed and able, in the end to do their experiments, I think they're going to get some truly baffling results.
~Hal
Don't confuse the VISIBLE universe and the ENTIRE universe.
They're not necessarily the same thing.
Wow, just wow. Hubble is going stronger than ever, it's hard to believe there was talk of retiring it because the refurbishing costs would be "too high". Yay Hubble!
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
If that were true, then there would be a central point that everything else was expanding away from. It would also imply an edge to the universe. The balloon analogy reduces space to two dimensions, but in reality there are three, so you need to imagine a "hyperballoon." It's still only an analogy, but it helps understand the geometry of what we think is happening.
(Sigh.)
The point was and is, just as when the Catholic Church was considered the guardian of all knowledge, (at least in Europe,) and an observation was made which pointed out that one of their stances was incorrect, (by being in direct contravention to what was observed,) they resisted, tormented those who disagreed, but ultimately had to revise their position when it became obvious they were wrong; so it is today.
Someone like me points out a theory has a problem, but that theory is so entrenched in the minds of its adherents that people try to shout him down, rather than listen, or instead make patronizing remarks. Like yours. The nice thing about science though, is that eventually, observation TRUMPS hypothesis, no matter how dearly cherished, so I don't really need to argue this point, I can simply wait.
The tip-off to the rip-off, as they once said, about the Big Bang Theory is that it requires the suspension of the laws of physics at the beginning to work. There are several other important problems, but that's the most glaring, IMAHO.
So I'll put it to you. What is the Schwarzschild radius of an object with the mass of... oh, say... the entire observable universe? (According to Wikipedia, the Schwarzschild Radius of an object with as small a mass as our sun is 3km. The SR of an entire galaxy, to say nothing of... everything, would be substantially larger.)
How exactly is it that what we observe today got from being smaller than the head of a pin to LARGER than that? Oh, and then there's the CMB. Interestingly enough, if that's radiant energy from the supposed "Bang", how exactly did the Earth get IN FRONT OF IT, for our radio-telescopes to be in position to intercept it? If you can't understand what I mean, try this experiment: fire a gun AWAY from you, and try to run in front of and CATCH the bullet. Since the bullet travels hundreds (if not thousands) of miles per hour faster than you can, unless you started out in front of it, catching it would be, well, a tricky proposition.
Young Universe Cosmologists (I used the wrong word before, sorry,) contend the CMB is energy thrown out at the moment of the "Bang" right? (Perhaps I misunderstood.) We'd have to be IN FRONT of the expanding sphere, or on the surface of the light-cone, as it were, to see it. This would require the matter which would one day become the Earth, to have travelled FASTER than light, wouldn't it?
Clearly you misunderstood the last part of my post, which might explain your patronizing tone. I meant, (by "allowed") whatever experiments it is PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE to conduct, not what some PERSON SAYS they may or mayn't. My fault I guess for trying to be subtle.
I guess I'm the fool though, expecting rational discourse on /. Honestly, I usually don't read the comments, I come here to read interesting and/or funny tech stories, and when I post, usually I'm just venting. Perhaps you think I am a Creationist, and that's where your attitude comes from. Honestly, I don't really care, but I'm not a Creationist. The point I was trying to make, though failing, in your case, apparently, was that Bangists are really just Creationists, but they've replaced the characters in the story. It's still the same story, if you can see it objectively.
I believe the universe had no beginning, will have no end, and either way it doesn't matter because the entire span of my life is so short I'll never know either way. Our entire species has lived, and shall die in less than the blink of a cosmological eye. We can argue all we like, but I'd rather just go out for ice-cream.
I believe the universe had no beginning, will have no end, and either way it doesn't matter because the entire span of my life is so short I'll never know either way.
And you know what? If all you had said is that you have this belief, then I wouldn't have taken issue with your post at all. I have beliefs too. You can have a good, rational discussion about beliefs as long as you acknowledge them as such. Beliefs aren't evidence, though, which is where philosophy diverges from science even though the latter is based in the former.
The enemies of Democracy are