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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."

4 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Does it still exist? by Dyinobal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So does it still exist? Considering how far the light is traveling to get here, is there any way to determine if the galaxy is even still there? Then again I don't imagine they just disappear but I dunno it could be suffering heat death and all the stars burning out.

    1. Re:Does it still exist? by PinkyGigglebrain · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Here is an interesting twist for you.

      What if that blob of a gallaxy is is really the Milkyway when it was very young and the light we are seeing has in fact traveled around the curve of the Universe so we can see it now the way it was then.

      We only have to wait 13.1 billion years to see if it evolves into what we see locally now.

  2. Record breaking by DavMz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am not sure it is a record-breaking galaxy, but Hubble is definitely a record-breaking telescope!

  3. AGE vs SIZE of the unverse by XARG · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am surprised to see so many comments without even one mentioning the difference between the AGE of the Universe (13.7 billion l.y. ) and the SIZE of the observable universe (radius 47 billion l.y.).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

    From the Wiki Article:
      The age of the Universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years. While it is commonly understood that nothing travels faster than light, it is a common misconception that the radius of the observable universe must therefore amount to only 13.7 billion light-years. This reasoning makes sense only if the Universe is the flat spacetime of special relativity; in the real Universe, spacetime is highly curved on cosmological scales, which means that 3-space (which is roughly flat) is expanding, as evidenced by Hubble's law. Distances obtained as the speed of light multiplied by a cosmological time interval have no direct physical significance.[11]

    So, the light from this Galaxy actually traveled more than 13.7 billion years (I don't know how to make the conversion but probably around 45 billion ?)

    XARG.