Record-Breaking Galaxy Found In Deep Hubble Image 196
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."
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does it still exist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does it still exist? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Does it still exist? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not even certain that this question makes sense. Not trolling; but if we can only know what's happening in that galaxy "600 million years ago," isn't that precisely what's happening now? The future timeline of that galaxy is not something we can know unless we have somebody go there, come back, and oh, wait: That person's info will STILL be at least 14.4 billion years behind. Or at least that's my interpretation of relativity: that what's happening somewhere else at the same time, especially on galactic scales, is not a question that makes sense.
Re:Does it still exist? (Score:1, Insightful)
If we somehow knew something about its fate, then that would mean that we got that knowledge through information transfer at a speed faster than light... The most current information we have about this object is its appearance as it was 13.1 billion years ago. Anything other than that is pure speculation based on our understanding of stellar and galaxy evolution.
Re:How fast was that galaxy moving? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or, think of space as a balloon, and think of the galaxies as little ink marks on the surface of the balloon; as air is pumped into the balloon, the surface of the balloon expands, and consequently the chocolate chips become farther apart from each other.
There is no central point from which galaxies were flung; after all, into what could they have been flung? Instead, the space between matter has expanded with time (and the greater the distance between two things, the greater the rate of expansion between them).
Re:How fast was that galaxy moving? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like another person pointed out earlier, due to hubble's constant for the expansion of the universe, the rate of spacetime expansion can exceed C, given a sufficiently large starting distance.
That is to say, the reason it took 13 billion years to reach us, is because the intervening space between it and us is growing consistently to hubble's constant; Literally "New spacetime" is being injected between it and us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble's_law [wikipedia.org]
Basically, it is why there is a distinction between the "Observable universe", and "The universe". We cannot see all of the universe, because parts of it are so far away that the rate of expansion exceeds the speed of light, so that the light can never reach us.
Re:Does it still exist? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not meaningless, just hidden from us. When a Mars probe is supposed to land at 1:23 UT, at that time the Mars probe either landed or crashed, and 30 minutes later at 1:53 UT when its signal is supposed to reach us we know whether the probe landed or crashed at 1:23 UT. If you then travel there with a clock and can somehow measure the age of the crater, you'll see that it occurred at 1:23 UT. Stuff is happening outside of your light cone, you know.
The galaxy is backlit ... (Score:3, Insightful)
And why isn't this galaxy backlit by the overwhelming brightness of the Big Bang itself? It would seem if you looked just a little bit further back in time everything ought to be one gigantnormous flash bulb.
The galaxy is backlit, the "flash" is merely at microwave frequencies not visible light frequencies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_background_radiation [wikipedia.org].
Re:appealing to science (Score:3, Insightful)
... how can a vacuum, with no physical or chemical properties, go 'bang?'
There was no vacuum yet. There was a "point" of stuff/energy we can't really describe very well that expanded *very* quickly. Referring to this expansion as an "explosion" or "bang" is just a convenient analogy.
FWIW, the phrase "big bang" was coined by opponents of the theory. It was an attempt to mock the theory.
Re:How fast was that galaxy moving? (Score:1, Insightful)
Light travels from the moment of The Big Bang until now approximately 14 billion years. And the speed of light is 300.000 km/s do the math. This discovery is big because now we can see how the early universe looked like which we are a part of, amazing. If you know the life spin of our universe, lets say that our universe is in its 40s, this means we are looking at our toddler pictures. Seeing this galaxy gives us glimpse in to the far past. What is there now lives only in your imagination because from that moment on that galaxy could have collided with another galaxy or was eaten by black hole or any other scenario you can come up with is plausible. Universe is so big.
twinkle twinkle little photon (Score:3, Insightful)
the light from this far-flung object has been traveling a whopping 13.1 billion years to get here!
What really boggles my mind is that we can detect it at all. Considering the enormous travel time, and thus the enormous distance, and that radiant power is what, quartered every time you double the distance, I'm just amazed we get any photons at all from there. At that distance, the shell of photons it emitted 13 billion years ago have got to be pretty spread out, and we'd almost be able to count them coming in, one every few minutes at best?