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Astronomers Find Most Distant Protocluster of Galaxies
The Bad Astronomer writes "Using the monster 8.2-meter Subaru telescope, astronomers have identified the most distant cluster of galaxies ever found: a collection of galaxies at a staggering distance of 12.7 billion light years. This is the most distant cluster ever seen that has been confirmed spectroscopically (PDF). Technically, it's a protocluster, since it's so young — seen only a billion years after the Big Bang itself — the cluster must still be in the process of formation."
Includes all-wheel drive and a boxer-engine.
It is incredible what we can accomplish as humans, imagine if we did not waste trillions on useless battles for the hear and minds of primitive retarded people with stone age believes.
So.... It's almost as old as your mom?
12.7 billion years ago it might have been 12.7 billion light years away, but where is it now?
It's all that one needs to travel the galactic outback.
the cluster must still be in the process of formation.
Well, it's still in the process of formation where we can visibly see it. Given that it's 12.7 billion light years away, I'd like to believe that the galaxies are properly formed at this point. Though, given that not one person knows exactly how long it takes to form a proper galaxy, who's to say that it isn't finished. It's all best guess I suppose. Really cool science though, knowing that light from 12.7 billion years ago is illuminating our planet, however faint it may be.
If you're looking here for something insightful or thought provoking, you're probably looking in the wrong place.
Scientists may only be detecting its protocluster stage because the light from its current stage hasn't made it here yet, but I'm willing to bet good money that it's neither young, nor a protocluster, nor still in the process of formation.
They might be able to find the Destiny.
To paraphrase: Astronomer: What am I looking at? When does this happen in the Big Bang? Telescope Operator: Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now. Astronomer: What happened to then? Telescope Operator: We passed then. Astronomer: When? Telescope Operator: Just now. We're at now now. Astronomer: Go back to then. Telescope Operator: When? Astronomer: Now. Telescope Operator: Now? Astronomer: Now. Telescope Operator: I can't. Astronomer: Why? Telescope Operator: We missed it. Astronomer: When? Telescope Operator: Just now. Astronomer: When will then be now? Telescope Operator: Soon.
Whenever one of these astronomy articles comes up about seeing a galaxy or cluster "near the big bang", there's one fundamental question which has always bothered me. . .
We are told that the universe is expanding, and has been expanding for about 14 Billion years. This means that everything was much closer together back 13 Billion years ago (when the summary says we are seeing the light from). Also, light travels much faster than the universe expands. So. . . why didn't the light pass us billions of years ago?
I realize that light takes time to travel, and that's the idea behind the idea that we can "look back in time" when we look at very distant astronomical objects. . . but. . . again, why didn't the light PASS US billions of years ago, since light expands outward faster than the universe expands outward? Wouldn't the universe need to have been expanding at almost the speed of light, for us to just now receive light from 13 Bn years ago? Well, that is, that the expansion would have had to happen at about 13/14 C?
The universe is expanding at the exact speed of light at it's "edge" (at least the edge we can just barely not see). It's expansion appears to slow on objects closer to us. So this light has been trying to travel across space as it was expanding. The distances it had to travel kept expanding and it eventually reached us after traveling for 12.7B light years (from our perspective).
This may help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
It's always fun to watch pseudo-critical morons dance their little dance. How, pray tell, does any of this cause problems for Big Bang cosmology?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"..... distance of 12.7 billion light years. "
If an object is 12.7 billion light years from us, the time that light takes to travel to us takes.... 12.7 billion years.
" ...the cluster must still be in the process of formation."
Nope. It _was_ in the process of formation about 12.7 billion years ago. Now that said cluster is 12.7 billion years older, and it is either very old or blown away to bits and pieces some time ago.
The distance works like a time machine, and for example we see and experience our Sun about 8 minutes 11 seconds later, which is the distance between Earth and Sun in "lightyears".
Ask me politely and perhaps I will explain it to you. Either that or you could read the post you are replying to.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
"Astronomers Find Most Distant Protocluster of Galaxies" - seems to imply a finite universe. That probably makes half the physicists in the world happy...
The post I replied to was written by a moron who uses words he does not understand to make points he cannot support. If you have the words of someone who isn't a moron, then by all means provide them. This is my official "Not Polite To Worthless Fucktards Day", and you sir, qualify, with pathetic idiotic claims that you have somehow debunked Big Bang cosmology.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Why should he have to ask you any more politely than he already did? Your assertion, to which is responded, was clearly intended as a troll, and he called you on it. Trolls don't get polite.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
A quick answer is to say that the universe assuredly is expanding faster than the speed of light. Or rather, it's expanding at some rate, and two sufficiently distant points will be receding from one another at the speed of light, or even greater than the speed of light. (You've no doubt heard that "nothing can travel faster than c" but in fact it's really that "energy (hence information) cannot propagate faster than c"... according to relativity spacetime itself can expand at any speed.)
A more detailed explanation can be found by reading this. The take-home message is that it's not so intuitive to think about time and distances when spacetime itself is changing as a function of time. Let's say a star is 1 billion light-years (Gly) from Earth. It emits light, and the light travels towards Earth. But since the space in between is expanding while the light is travelling, it will take more than 1 billion years for the light to reach us. And when it does, the star will no longer be 1 billion light-years away, but will be some further distance.
If you look at Figure 1 in the link above, you'll see that what happened is this:
1. When the universe was 1 billion years old, the protocluster emits some light. At this time, the distance from the cluster to Earth (actually, the position where Earth will one day form) is ~2.5 billion light-years.
2. The light travelled outwards, while the universe was expanding.
3. In the present day (age of universe: 13.7 billion years), the light reaches our location. The protocluster (which has now evolved into something else, no doubt) is now at a distance of ~27 billion light-years from us. (Note that currently the edge of the visible universe is ~46 billion light-years away. The universe is only 13.7 billion years old, but the edge is further than 13.7 billion light-years away since, again, that space is moving away from us for that whole time. C.f. comoving distance.)
As I remain polite, I have either refuted your assertion that my post was trollish or the assertion that trolls don't get polite. If you need a longer explanation try reading this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Bang-Never-Happened/dp/067974049X
It is heavily referenced, and much more evidence disproving the Big Bang has appeared since it was written. I don't feel strongly enough to fight about it, but I'm always up for some reasoned discourse. It doesn't have to be polite, so long as it does not confuse a good insult with a good argument. I made a good argument and it has not been addressed.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
If you back away and look at it objectively, the Big Bang Theory is simply a retelling of the Genesis bullshit story, but replacing the names of characters with names that sound less Harry Potterish. Take a good look at it, and forget, if you're capable of it, the utterly false, and intellectually void argument that we must accept it if we cannot ourselves come up with a better theory. Incidentally, I have a better theory, one that accommodates all the "evidence" for the alleged "Big Bang" without resorting to suspending the laws of physics or causality... but last time I discussed it on /., you guys proved you don't like hearing ideas that challenge your cherished fucking illusions, so I'm not going to bother telling you again what happened; apparently, you can't handle the truth. (My view does not require imaginary fairy-tale beings, or they're rebadged pseudo-scientific equivalents.) Enjoy believing in your young-universe cosmology, just don't get mad when my previous predictions come true, and "scientists" and "astronomers" have to keep revising the age of the universe UP as they see things farther and farther away with their ever-increasingly-powerful telescopes...
it's full of stars!
I made a good argument and it has not been addressed.
Well, you said some stuff. It wasn't a good argument. I could say that the universe was turtles all the way down, and also say that was a good argument. But neither of those things would be true, either.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Please show your work. (Hint... It will involve math.)
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Instead cosmologists are claiming it is 90% super-special undetectable matter and energy. At least the turtle hypothesis is testable.
The Big Bang hypothesis is testable too; it predicts that there were no galaxy clusters 1 billion years (12.7b years ago) after the big bang, it was a bunch of plasma and quasars. And anything observed from that timeframe should look much different than what is next door. So they invent a host of exotic theoretical energies to bring empirical knowledge in line with their theoretically derived origin of the universe.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
The premise of your argument is that the expansion of space can't cause the distance between two objects to increase at a rate greater than the speed of light. I don't know where you got that from, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_the_universe.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
The only problem is that plasma cosmology has been pretty much abandoned ever since WMAP confirmed many predictions about the BB model.
How the fuck did this get "Informative"? It's total bullshit. Informative is the worst tag on slashdot, it implies the moderators somehow, by being moderators, know what's true more than other users, (or, at all...) which in this case they clearly don't.
Time passes for all things. Photons just as anything else. Just because they're going really fast doesn't mean somehow time isn't passing for them, so you're mistaken. They've experienced the same amount of time, for all intents and purposes.
You just don't understand relativity, AC. What you're saying is very much like claiming that ships would fall off the edge of the earth if it were round, or that the earth can't circle the sun because we would fall off and burn to a crisp. You cling to Newtonian time, just as your forefathers clung to the Ptolemaic world view.
That time passes differently depending on your speed is now indisputable - even satellite clocks used for GPS have to compensate for that! The faster you go, the more profound the effect. As you approach the speed of light in vacuum, the passage of time approaches zero. At c, it is zero.
This precludes any universal time as Newton (and you) perceived it. It is always a local phenomenon.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity for more details.
Technically it's no younger than anything around it, as all matter in the universe is the same age, it's just farther away so it looks like it's young. It's actually exactly the same age as things that are closer. I hope the same people who write things like this aren't responsible for the calculations that resulted in "dark matter."
It's an empty confirmation if it depends on the universe being 90% fairies. Show me one fairy and maybe I'll believe in the rest.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Initially, the expansion of the universe was a lot faster than the speed of light: the universe got really large very shortly after the bang.
That's been one of the things I've wondered about. How close were "we" to that galaxy when the light was emitted, how far have we traveled in the time since the light was emitted and "chasing us". How far back can we possibly see before any light emitted has overtaken us?
It wasn't a troll. He very clearly described why he believes that this poses a problem for the Big Bang theory:
They are too well formed and close together to support the BB hypothesis
In other words, "they look much older than they should look at only a billion years old".