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Caltech Astronomers Discover Oldest Galaxy Yet Known

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-don't-look-a-day-over-10-billion dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Caltech astronomers have discovered a galaxy believed to be the oldest and farthest ever observed. They estimate it to be 13.2 billion years old. The universe itself is about 13.8 billion years old. The discovery may lead to a revision of theories of age and evolution of the early universe. The team published their findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

63 comments

  1. Oldies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oldies are goodies.

    1. Re:Oldies by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Funny

      Oldies are goodies.

      Get off my plasma!

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Oldies by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 1

      Oldies are goodies.

      Indeed. What made this galaxy stand out is that they found it on the southbound 405 doing 35 mph... in the passing lane... with it's left turn indicator blinking...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
  2. 600 million, not thousand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    A tenth of a billion is 100 million, so 600 million years younger, not 600 thousand.

    1. Re:600 million, not thousand by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Funny

      They're using imperial years, not metric.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    2. Re:600 million, not thousand by mister_playboy · · Score: 4, Informative

      I would have joked about imperial versus metric billion instead:

      A billion is a large number with two distinct definitions:

              1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 109 (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now generally the meaning in both British and American English.[1][2]
              1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 1012 (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the long scale. This is one thousand times larger than the short scale billion, and equivalent to the short scale trillion.

      American English always uses the short scale definition but British English has employed both versions. Historically, the United Kingdom used the long scale billion but since 1974 official UK statistics have used the short scale. Since the 1950s the short scale has been increasingly used in technical writing and journalism, although the long scale definition still enjoys common usage.[3]

      Another word for one thousand million is milliard, but this is used much less often in English than billion. Some languages, such as French or German, use milliard (or a related word) for the short scale billion, and billion (or a related word) for the long scale billion. Thus the French or German billion is a thousand times larger than the modern English billion.

      Of course, the error in summary goes is clearly not related to this issue... it's just wrong rather than nerdy wrong as would befit this site. :P

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    3. Re:600 million, not thousand by robi5 · · Score: 1

      > Of course, the error in summary goes is clearly not related to this issue

      Indeed, 13.2 billion as the age of the universe is disambiguated only by what web site you read it on - if it's Slashdot, 1E9 years, while if it's on some religious blog, then about a thousand years or less.

    4. Re:600 million, not thousand by rossdee · · Score: 1

      "Another word for one thousand million is milliard,"

      And presumably 1000 (British) Billion is a Billiard

      But I prefer snooker

  3. Quoting Annonymous Readers by huckamania · · Score: 1

    Slashdot editors, not so much. Still, the linked article is an interesting read.

  4. Um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    13.8 billion - 13.2 billion = 600,000?

    1. Re:Um by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Rounding.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    2. Re:Um by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      new math. you get used to it.

  5. Distance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How do they determine distance based on redshift? Isn't redshift caused by a velocity difference?

    1. Re:Distance by Edis+Krad · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes!
      The universe is expanding in every direction. Think of it as a balloon inflating. Any two spots on the surface become further and further apart. The farther they are from each other, the faster the move away from each other as the balloon inflates.

      Similarly, as the universe expands, the objects that are the furthest away move the fastest away from us, thus causing more redshift than objects closer to us. Although you should not think as much as the object itself moving away, as much as the space between the objects becoming larger.

      Sorry if your ears are bleeding now.

    2. Re:Distance by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      How do we know there aren't galaxies beyond our ability to see them already?

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    3. Re:Distance by Henriok · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are. Inflation made it so that we speak of the "visible universe" which is what we can see, in contrast to the rest of the universe which we cannot see.

      --

      - Henrik

      - when the Shadows descend -
    4. Re:Distance by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      We don't.

    5. Re:Distance by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      "there are" implies certainty where none exists. There may be. There may not be.

    6. Re:Distance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not because the edge of the universe is out of reach that you can't fall off of it.
      But while we learn to travel faster and further, the distance from wherever we are to the edge of the universe grows correspondingly. That's an open-ended system, but now we're being told it's not infinite so extrapolation is illegal.
      And you'd not really fall into a complete void anyway, you'd fall on top of a giant giant turtle.

    7. Re:Distance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The universe is expanding in every direction. Think of it as a balloon inflating. Any two spots on the surface become further and further apart. The farther they are from each other, the faster the move away from each other as the balloon inflates. ...

      Sorry if your ears are bleeding now.

      If they do it is mostly because of the bad analogy.
      When a balloon is inflated the volume typically increases in a linear fashion, or with some deceleration over time if you take into consideration that the pressure in the balloon counteract against the pressure that pushes air into it.

      This means that on an inflating balloon the different points on the surface moves away slower from each other as the balloon inflates rather than faster.
      As the volume inside the balloon approaches infinity the increment of it will be insignificant and the distance between the surface points stop increasing.

      The balloon analogy needs to go, it makes things worse than not having it.

    8. Re:Distance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are. Inflation made it so that we speak of the "visible universe" which is what we can see, in contrast to the rest of the universe which we cannot see.

      Aha! So THAT's where all the aliens are...

    9. Re:Distance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By that logic, we are not certain that the periodic table of the elements is the same all over the universe either. So, if we're not sure of that, what are we basing our observations on? Light reacts to the electronic structure of atoms, so what does observing light mean if you're not sure that the atoms are all the same?

      And if you do grant that atoms are all the same across the universe, by what logic did you reach that conclusion?

    10. Re:Distance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spectroscopy gives you a pretty big hint considering it is sensitive to things like the nuclear charge and mass, electron structure, and even QFT properties for higher mass elements. For molecular spectroscopy, it depends on atomic mass and binding strength. And this is a field that does really high precision work, so if you want to propose some change in structure to atoms, you would likely need something very convoluted to make everything look the same to spectroscopy.

    11. Re:Distance by Edis+Krad · · Score: 1

      Half credit.
      Assuming an imaginary balloon that never explodes and we're filling up with air at a constant rate, yes, you are right! The volume differential is less each time, so the overall inflating of the balloon is slower over time.

      However, in the case of the universe, the balloon is being inflated faster as time passes by (current universe expansion is assumed to be accelerating). Furthermore, even in the case of a steadily inflating balloon, we're talking about relative speeds between dots on the surface, which still holds true even if the volume differential slows down. Points father away from each other separate faster than close one for any given delta time.

    12. Re:Distance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You make some good points, but analogies by definition are not perfect. An analogy needs to first and foremost be comprehensible to the demographic hearing it. People understand balloons.

    13. Re:Distance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      New stars are born all the time. We can see them only after the time it takes for their light to reach us. So before that they were part of the invisible universe. I'd say that's pretty much a certainty. Of course strictly speaking we can't be certain of anything, except for the tautology and cogito ergo sum.

  6. In other news today... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    - Cancer has no cure
    - Fusion power generation still not built
    - Cosmology has been a waste of time for some time now as its not solving real problems

    1. Re:In other news today... by Crashmarik · · Score: 0

      - Cancer has no cure
      - Fusion power generation still not built
      - Cosmology has been a waste of time for some time now as its not solving real problems

      Nope nope not at all. Cosmology serves as an object lesson in what happens when you let academics get entrenched

    2. Re:In other news today... by vlad30 · · Score: 1

      Maybe cosmologists will find someone out there to give you the cure or fusion power, However I subscribe to that intelligent lifeforms will look at that post and deem us not sufficiently advanced for first contact

      --
      Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
    3. Re:In other news today... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You have no grasp of Cosmology _at_ _all_.
      Part of what this makes News is that we now have a target to analyze Spectroscopically.
      Nucleosynthesis in first generation Galaxies is still opaque to us; we can replicate various Models at Accelerators, but we still have no clue as to which Models are correct and most probable.
      Screw you and whatever Tinker-Toy Tech education that you have. You sure as hell have no place in the Academia that you so despise.

    4. Re:In other news today... by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

      You have no grasp of Cosmology _at_ _all_.
      Part of what this makes News is that we now have a target to analyze Spectroscopically.
      Nucleosynthesis in first generation Galaxies is still opaque to us; we can replicate various Models at Accelerators, but we still have no clue as to which Models are correct and most probable.
      Screw you and whatever Tinker-Toy Tech education that you have. You sure as hell have no place in the Academia that you so despise.

      Thank you for making my point for me.

    5. Re:In other news today... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Informative

      > Cosmology serves as an object lesson in what happens when you let academics get entrenched

      They get to see the handwriting of God, writ large in the universe around us? They explain the very origins of matter, and solve Fermi's Paradox? They help provide a sense of scale to our image of ourselves in the universe? They confirm the interactions of gravity and light, fundamental forces in physics? They explain the concentrations of different types of matter in the universe? They explain and reveal the nature of background radiation that affect electronics, and weather?

      It's amazing how looking at the largest scales of the universe leads back to information about the smallest scales of the universe, and both _do_ affect every day life. We just tend not to notice that from day to day.

    6. Re: In other news today... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fusion, and especially cancer, get a lot more money and manpower than cosmology research. Those subjects produce a lot more results, but it is not like there is a news article for every paper, "We slightly imrpoved knowledge of pathways for protein XYZ" and, "We improved observations on scaling of instability ABC"

    7. Re:In other news today... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In 1920, we thought the entire universe was our galaxy. Think about that, you provincial halfwit.

    8. Re:In other news today... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cosmology is probably by far the best way to verify our existing physics understanding relatively cheaply. Better understanding of physics will help many other sciences and might one day make a fusion power generator possible and many physics theories would probably be impossible or very hard to measure for us without cosmology. We aren't exactly able to generate a big bang currently (well, not the big bang in the cosmology sense), and yet its the biggest known explosion. I'll be damned if its not a generals wet dream to one day be able to blow shit up using a big bang scale explosion.

      Not only that, but the biggest amount of resources we currently know of is not situated on earth. There are many, many more resources spread around the galaxy. It is very shortsighted to not put any effort into mapping and measuring them for later extraction.

    9. Re:In other news today... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      maybe some day academics will find a cure for your brand of retardation

    10. Re:In other news today... by trooper9 · · Score: 1

      Thanks for that. You just made my day.

      --
      blah
    11. Re:In other news today... by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

      In 1920, we thought the entire universe was our galaxy. Think about that, you provincial halfwit.

      Thank the Astronomers. Cosmologists were just as dogmatically certain then as they are now.

    12. Re:In other news today... by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

      > Cosmology serves as an object lesson in what happens when you let academics get entrenched

      They get to see the handwriting of God, writ large in the universe around us? They explain the very origins of matter, and solve Fermi's Paradox? They help provide a sense of scale to our image of ourselves in the universe? They confirm the interactions of gravity and light, fundamental forces in physics? They explain the concentrations of different types of matter in the universe? They explain and reveal the nature of background radiation that affect electronics, and weather?

      It's amazing how looking at the largest scales of the universe leads back to information about the smallest scales of the universe, and both _do_ affect every day life. We just tend not to notice that from day to day.

      More the case they fancy themselves the theologians of science.

    13. Re:In other news today... by firewrought · · Score: 1

      But you get it all wrong, see. Unless you can use it to build a bigger bomb or increase next quarter's earnings per share, knowledge isn't worth acquiring. /s

      --
      -1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
    14. Re:In other news today... by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      I'm not too keen on argumentum ad cancerhasn'tbeencuredyet. In reality research in different areas inform each other. Solid State Physics (or Squalid State Physics), useful in medicine (and indeed the technology of cancer research and treatment), informs theoretical physics and hence cosmology. Cosmological observations help verify and direct theoretical physics research, that feeds back into squalid state physics, and so on.

    15. Re:In other news today... by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      In what way have cosmologists solved Fermi's Paradox?

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    16. Re:In other news today... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      I'm sorry, I mentioned the wrong paradox. They have contributed to understanding the Fermi Paradox solution by setting an upper bound to the size and age of the perceptible universe, and a maximum age of the components for complex chemistry that might sustain life.

      The paradox they really solved is Ober's Paradox, which involves a tradeoff between the density of glowing objects like stars, and how many are in a volume, and why the more distant stars do not radiate so much light to be seen, even faintly, at Earth that the night sky is uniformly as bright as the Sun. The answer is that, as more distant galaxies recede at greater and greater speeds, their light is red-shifted and less energetic. And they've established an initial start and thus a maximum radius for our universe, so there are no perceptible sources of light from outside that radius.

  7. Billion, million, whatever by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They estimate it to be 13.2 billion years old, making it only about 600,000 years younger than the Big Bang.

    Only out by a factor of 1000. Not bad.

    I don't suppose anyone will actually bother editing it to stop Slashdot looking like an idiot.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Billion, million, whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not only that it should be 600.000.000 instead of 600.000. It's an incorrect statement since it implies that the galaxy appeared before the big bang. It should be "600M years older than the universe"

    2. Re:Billion, million, whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your out of factor factor is also in need of a look at.

    3. Re:Billion, million, whatever by BlackPignouf · · Score: 1

      It might be a bit too advanced for you, but my older sister really is born before me!

    4. Re:Billion, million, whatever by h33t+l4x0r · · Score: 1

      But nothing was born before her, if we were to extend the analogy.

    5. Re:Billion, million, whatever by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      Does it? Do explain why.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    6. Re:Billion, million, whatever by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      You're an idiot.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  8. Re:Older than Big Bang galaxies by michelcolman · · Score: 2

    However, within the next 10 years I suspect they will start finding galaxies older than the big bang.

    What would be even better, would be blueshifted galaxies from a different big bang. That would raise some eyebrows...

  9. Re:Older than Big Bang galaxies by stevelinton · · Score: 1

    This is true. However, within the next 10 years I suspect they will start finding galaxies older than the big bang.

    You can, of course, suspect what you like, but out of curiousity why? What we see is remarkably consistent with a big bang. The very old galaxies we
    see are small and poorly structured, as we would expect, the CMB is still there, etc.

  10. 600,000 year old galaxy isn't consistent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A 600,000 year old galaxy isn't consistent with the "Big Bang".
     
    It would take far more time than that for a galaxy to put itself together.
     
    This is why the observation is raising eyebrows in the first place.

  11. 13.8b - 13.2b = 600m by cmholm · · Score: 1

    As others have been noting, the editors' math was off. 600,000,000 years is consistent. The nebula and stars would be extremely metal-poor (i.e. hardly any elements other than H and He).

    --
    Luke, help me take this mask off ... Just for once, let me butterfly kiss you with my own eyes.
  12. The "editors" here suck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The "editors" here suck!

  13. not 13.2 billion years old by John_Sauter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What we are seeing is not a galaxy that is 13.2 billion years old. Rather, we are seeing a galaxy as it existed 13.2 billion years ago. It is actually quite young, for a galaxy.

  14. Re: Older than Big Bang galaxies by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

    Nope it will be falling ratings.

  15. assumptions by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, they observed a galaxy with a redshift of 8.86. It is *assumed* that such a redshift is due to both Hubble expansion of space and relative velocity to us. Then an age and distance is calculated. However the underlying assumptions may be wrong.

    1. Re:assumptions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually they observed photons with a certain frequency. It is assumed that they were emitted by stars within a galaxy.

      Actually they observed a readout on a display. It is assumed that this corresponds to the received photon frequencies.

      Actually they had impulses sent to their brain that they interpreted as a display readout. It is assumed that this came from the display of an instrument.

      Actually they remember this event happening by accessing synaptic memories. It is assumed that this is the result of a real event.

      Seriously, grow the fuck up. We KNOW that when you measure something you have to translate back to what the source is (hence optical illusions work etc).

  16. yo mama by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the discovery of the galaxy was promptly followed by the discovery of a slightly older entity. YO MAMA JOKES.

    yo mama so old that just after they discovered this galaxy they found evidence it had already been inside yo mama

  17. I like the realistic picture - merely a point by peter303 · · Score: 1

    The more general press releases show a galaxy with lots of resolved stars. Imknow that cant be true.