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Hubble Shatters the Cosmic Distance Record

Posted by timothy on from the it's-like-the-stanley-cup dept.

An anonymous reader writes: One of the holy grails of cosmology is to measure, directly, exactly when the first stars and galaxies formed in our Universe. The Hubble Space Telescope has been pushing the distance record farther and farther back, with its measurements typically confirmed by ground-based, spectroscopic follow-ups. This time, however, the new record-holder was so distant that confirmation needed to be done from space: by Hubble itself. The result? A galaxy at a redshift of z=11.1, from when the Universe was just 400 million years old, or a mere 3% of its current age. This is a record that will likely stand until the James Webb Space Telescope launches, as it took a combination of incredible work and incredible luck to find a galaxy this far back with our current technology.

2 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. STOP! Pushing Forbes for Science articles!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For fuck sake! STOP! Pushing Forbes for Science articles!!!

  2. Block or identify Forbes paid links by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Has Forbes any kind of business relation with Slashdot? I can't find another explanation for the repetitive insistance on linking to it.

    It this behavior is going to continue, paid links should at least be identified, so those of us who won't ever whitelist Forbes in our adblocks don't have to hover every link to avoid opening the Forbes spam over and over again.