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Record-Breaking Galaxy Found In Deep Hubble Image

Posted by samzenpus on from the old-neighborhood dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers using Hubble Space Telescope have found a galaxy at the very edge of the Universe: the light from this far-flung object has been traveling a whopping 13.1 billion years to get here! The galaxy appears as a non-descript dot in the infrared Hubble Ultra Deep Field taken using the Wide Field Camera 3, but a spectrum taken using a ground-based telescope confirms that we're seeing this object as it was a mere 600 million years after the Big Bang itself."

3 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Does it still exist? by theantipop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mathematics.

  2. Re:How fast was that galaxy moving? by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Like another person pointed out earlier, due to hubble's constant for the expansion of the universe, the rate of spacetime expansion can exceed C, given a sufficiently large starting distance.

    That is to say, the reason it took 13 billion years to reach us, is because the intervening space between it and us is growing consistently to hubble's constant; Literally "New spacetime" is being injected between it and us.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble's_law

    Basically, it is why there is a distinction between the "Observable universe", and "The universe". We cannot see all of the universe, because parts of it are so far away that the rate of expansion exceeds the speed of light, so that the light can never reach us.

  3. Re:Does it still exist? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not meaningless, just hidden from us. When a Mars probe is supposed to land at 1:23 UT, at that time the Mars probe either landed or crashed, and 30 minutes later at 1:53 UT when its signal is supposed to reach us we know whether the probe landed or crashed at 1:23 UT. If you then travel there with a clock and can somehow measure the age of the crater, you'll see that it occurred at 1:23 UT. Stuff is happening outside of your light cone, you know.