Record-Breaking Galaxy Cluster Found 246
The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers are reporting that they have detected the most distant cluster of galaxies ever seen: a mind-smashing 9.6 billion light years away, 400 million light years more distant than the previous record holder. The cluster, handily named SXDF-XCLJ0218-0510, was seen in infrared images by the giant Subaru telescope, and confirmed with spectroscopy and the X-ray detection of million-degree gas (a smoking gun of clusters). Every time astronomers push back the record for clusters, they learn more about the early conditions of the universe, so this cluster will provide insight into how the universe itself changed over the first few billion years after the Big Bang."
Intriguing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pushing galaxy formation earlier isn't merely a case of getting a more obscene number. It's giving the models we use to analyze galaxies a serious work-out. Same with spotting ever-earlier stars. In the case of stars, we're pushing the limits of what existing models permit for star formation. If we go much further back there, then the models have an error. Which is good. Science gets booooring when the models are correct and everything matches predictions. Adventure, Excitement and Really Wild Things are only possible when the old models fail and have to either be re-tuned or replaced.
(This is why the failure to detect Dark Matter was so important. Dark Matter is absolutely mandatory for certain models to predict correctly how the universe works. Failure in science is not a bad thing, it is an extraordinarily GOOD thing, as it requires people to revisit past assumptions and past data, to see why the discrepancy exists. It also requires scientists to develop new ideas of what to look for. Some things, we don't know what scale we should be looking at. The Higg's Boson is an example. We've a good idea the LHC will see evidence of it, provided all the numbers are right, but we can't be sure. Gravity waves are tougher - we really should be seeing those by now but aren't. However, all modern gravity wave detectors are merely oversized Michelson-Morley experiments, which Einstein demonstrated could never observe the theorized medium of the ether, no matter how accurate they were. It is therefore possible that gravity waves aren't detectable because the experiments are the wrong ones. It is also possible that they aren't detectable because they aren't there. What isn't possible is for both theory and experiment to be correct.
The ideal in science is to find things that break the current model, but not by too much. Just enough to do interesting work, but not enough that they have to dodge apples falling upwards.
Um yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
A bunch of galaxies in an image != galaxy cluster.
But hey, links to the Hubble UDF are always enjoyed. :)
Re:Fascinating! (Score:3, Insightful)
We're pretty sure now that the universe isn't smaller in "diameter" than the age of the universe, thanks to detailed studies of the cosmic microwave background radiation - we would expect to see the same images both close and at a distance if light were "looping", and we're not seeing that.
There's not much to go on for the physics of the actual size of the universe; it's the size of the observable universe that gets discussed. We can see things over 45 billion light years away (by current theories of how to estimate large distances), so the observable universe is at least 90 billion light years "across".
-1, Pedant [Re:Um yeah] (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Fascinating! (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it pretty hard to believe that we are that close to reaching the 'edge' of the universe. What will these materialists do when we discover a galaxy that is further away in light years than the universe is old?
As other have hinted (but not spelled out), you are trying to think out an einsteinean universe in euclidean terms. Since space itself is expanding, the euclidean numbers aren't expected to add up "right".
Either they will have to adjust the value for the age of the universe (as they normally do) or they will have to accept that the current method for determining age is flawed (i.e., that the universe appears older than it actually is).
I don't know about materialists, but scientists will go wherever the evidence leads.
Sometimes kicking and screaming, as in the case of continental drift, but the evidence always wins in the end.
It is certain that we're still wrong about some things -- probably a lot of things. But you can't take too much comfort from that; the corrections always take us further from the neolithic conception of reality rather than revealing that it was correct after all.
Re:Fascinating! (Score:3, Insightful)
I know first-hand there are a LOT of religious scientists. I don't understand how, but it's true.
There's nothing that really conflicts between spirituality and science. Science is about things we can observe and test. Spirituality is for things beyond which science can be used to understand reality. The "metaphysical" is about things which our physics don't yet understand. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that people thought it was impossible for an invisible force to act upon a solid object. Now we have magnets that can push things around seemingly by magic. Not long ago, people thought it was impossible to communicate with other people in other lands. Now we have radio and satellite communications, that let us talk to other people through thin air. These things would seem like magic to someone from the year 1500. Who knows what other unknown forces exist which we don't fully understand?
Don't forget also, that spirituality and philosophy are somewhat related, and philosophy is something that will never be superseded by science, as it's an orthogonal study.
The problem, however, is when you turn spirituality into "religion", and make a big human-managed power structure out of it (which of course requires regular mandatory "donations" of 10% of your income), and throw in a lot of dogma about things that plainly conflict with scientific understanding gained through examination of physical evidence. The whole 6500-year-old Earth idea, which about 1/3 of Americans and probably more than 1/2 of Turkey's population believe in, is a good example of this.
A scientist who believes there may be a higher power of some kind isn't acting against his training as a scientist, only acknowledging that there may be things which science can't account for. But a "scientist" who believes the Earth is 6500 years old should be fired and sent to work as a janitor.