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."
Does it still exist? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does it still exist? (Score:5, Informative)
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But rust never sleeps
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And Rock 'n Roll will never die.
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Except BizzyM is quoting Def Leppard's 'Rock of Ages' from their Pyromania album.
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Re:Does it still exist? (Score:4, Informative)
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I think there's a maximum length after which a galaxy cannot exist; diminishing element returns from supernovae. Unfortunately I'm not sure how long it is, but it's much longer than 13 billion years; individual red dwarves can last for hundreds of billions of years. As for merger with other galaxies or destruction by a supermassive black hole though, its anyone's guess.
If the universe is under 15 billions years old, how do we know red dwarves can last 100 billion years?
Re:Does it still exist? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mathematics.
The discipline that applies into everything, but in itself is about nothing (real).
Re:Does it still exist? (Score:4, Informative)
You might be tickled to learn that there are some (wild-ish) theories that posit "every mathematical abstraction exists", as in, for every concept you can derive from mathematics, it actually exists "somewhere". Look at "mathematical multiverse" here http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html [mit.edu] And Tegmark is not actually a crackpot, just fanciful. :)
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Philosopher Kings (Score:4, Funny)
You might be tickled to learn that there are some (wild-ish) theories that posit "every mathematical abstraction exists", as in, for every concept you can derive from mathematics, it actually exists "somewhere". Look at "mathematical multiverse" here http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html [mit.edu] And Tegmark is not actually a crackpot, just fanciful. :)
Paraphrasing ontologist Bill Clinton: "It depends on your definition of 'exists'". For epistemological questions I refer you to Donald Rumsfeld.
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The discipline that applies into everything, but in itself is about nothing (real).
It's kind of like C++ in that regard. It can do anything, but without the appropriate libraries (application knowledge) it can do nothing.
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except that the libraries are written in C++ too...
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Re:Does it still exist? (Score:5, Funny)
The discipline that applies into everything, but in itself is about nothing (real).
I think you'll find that math is in fact a lot about reals.
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Which means that nothing is real?
I hereby solemnly declare that nothing is, indeed, real.
Also real are, for the matter of generalization by induction, nobody and noone (which aren't just anybody or, respectively, anyone; paradoxically, the aren't somebody/someone either).
My friend, it is only the complex numbers that have an imaginary part.
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Only if you declare it in Pascal. When using C it should be double.
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http://xkcd.com/435/ [xkcd.com]
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It's what it's made of. Back in the 22nd Century aerospace engineers discovered that after a plane crash, the only thing that always survives intact is a cute little doll, so they made Red Dwarf* out of the same stuff.
*OK OK. I searched the quote and realised it was Starbug, not Red Dwarf, I forgot about that. Still, I wanted the quote anyway. Sue me.
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Considering the article estimates the bing bang to have happend around 13.7 billion years ago, I don't see how red dwarves can exist for over 100 billion years.
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Re:Does it still exist? (Score:4, Informative)
Considering the article estimates the bing bang to have happend around 13.7 billion years ago, I don't see how red dwarves can exist for over 100 billion years.
Observe a red dwarf over a period of years and estimate its current mass as well as its rate of mass depletion. Then do the math and calculate the amount of time it will take until its mass is such that it is no longer a red dwarf. Obviously someone has done this and come up with an estimated longevity of more than 100 billion years.
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Observe a red dwarf over a period of years and estimate its current mass as well as its rate of mass depletion. Then do the math and calculate the amount of time it will take until its mass is such that it is no longer a red dwarf. Obviously someone has done this and come up with an estimated longevity of more than 100 billion years.
You can't argue with logic like that.
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Yes. Did you miss the memo?
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I guess you were eating at "The Restaurant at the Start of the Universe". I like their band.
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To you it may be but to me, a listener of the original radio series and reader of the (the correct, unbastardised) UK versions of the book it is known as the Big Bang Burger Chef.
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Re:Does it still exist? (Score:5, Informative)
according to relativity, if we see it it exists.
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No, the grandparent's point is that for all intents and purposes, we only experience something else as existing by signals exchanged at the speed of light (the basic point of special relativity). Whether or not an object exists "right now" is sorta a meaningless question to ask in the first place.
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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.
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Except in older video games. If it wasn't rendered on the screen, it wasn't active and moving. You could leave the room, wander the dungeon, and come back, and that monster would be in exactly the same place when you can back with the mega-gun.
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Since every direction we look we see the same type of cosmology at the edge of visible space, 1)we are no closer than 13~bly from the edge of the universe, and 2)What is seen here has already followed the same pattern of galaxy life cycle that can be observed from looking from farthest away to closest in.
So, It still exists as a distinct galaxy or it has merged with another galaxy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_formation_and_evolution [wikipedia.org]
PS NO, it's not still in the location we observe it today, it has
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Re:Does it still exist? (Score:5, Informative)
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You know what Hawking says about Schrödinger.
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I didn't before, but thanks to your sig I do now!
I still don't know what he meant though... :(
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What if that blob of a gallaxy is is really the Milkyway when it was very young and the light we are seeing has in fact traveled around the curve of the Universe so we can see it now the way it was then.
We only have to wait 13.1 billion years to see if it evolves into what we see locally now.
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Sorry, but it took a really long time to compose my response to the parent. Please refer below.
Also: if the curvature of space is recursive and uniform in all directions, and we can see ourselves from here, then the microwave background pattern of the Universe is not an echo from the Big Bang. That signal must then be ourselves at whatever distance the curvature loops back, and the pattern is doppled by the masses along the loop which gives us a way to map all that is.
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The three degree background might be the energy emitted by all the stars, etc., and attenuated (inverse square) by the distance and overlaped with itself each time it travels back to its origin. That would explain the uniformity of it.
Of course this would mean we live in a bounded Universe that was only(!)13.1 billion light years wide.
Just as interesting is to consider that from the view point of that galaxy now a sentient would see the Milkyway looking the
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Whoa. As Keanu Reaves would say.
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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 galact
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The Universe is really good about recycling stuff. From what we know of the preservation of mass/energy and the evolution of galaxies and stars, the stuff that galaxy was made of was is still there mostly - except for tiny fraction of mass that's been converted to energy - a small fraction of which is the light that we see. The stars have gone Nova or Supernova, faded to red giants, or collided with other stars to be reignited and reborn as a new class of star while throwing off much mass that cools to be
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Great little monograph.
thx, sr
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Unlikely, the oldest known star in the milky way is a 13.2 billion year old red giant called HE 1523-0901.
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Actually, the way we see it is the way it is "now", from our point of view. Remember that time is relative.
What this means is that there is no concept of "now" at the location of that galaxy that corresponds to our "now", apart from the point we are actually seeing.
There is no objective observer that can observe both points "at the same time", and in fact no such correspondance exists.
To answer your question: yes it does still exist, at least from our point of view of time.
Record breaking (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not sure it is a record-breaking galaxy, but Hubble is definitely a record-breaking telescope!
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Oh, you're not the only one...
Whoa! (Score:2)
How fast was that galaxy moving? (Score:2, Interesting)
So they're trying to tell me that within 600 million years of the big bang, that galaxy managed to get 13 billion light years away from where our galaxy now lies? Even if we and it are at opposite ends of the universe, it would have to have gotten 6.5 billion light years from the center of the universe in those 600 million years, yes? It sounds like it must have been going a bit over the speed limit, don't you think? It got that far away, and still had time to form into a galaxy? Why is my slide rule meltin
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Good question! I think it has something to do with the stretching of space-time. The galaxy was there 600 million years after the big bang, 13 billion light years from where we were going to be, but space-time (the universe) was smaller. In a way, the light-year was smaller than it is now, but that galaxy was still moving away from our location at nearly light speed.
What is interesting to me is that a galaxy could be formed at all in 600 million years!
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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
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.
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One parsec is 3.262 light years
13.1 billion light years = 3980 Mpc
Apparently, Hubbles constant places the rate of expansion at 77 (km/s) / Mpc:
77 (km/s) / Mpc * 3980 Mpc = 306460 km/s
So, this galaxy is moving away from us roughly at the speed of light. I guess that means time will appear to stand still when we observe that galaxy?
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The speed of light is the speed limit of anything that has mass in the universe. Space itself does not have mass.
It is also a relative thing. Any two nearby points in the universe are moving apart very slowly. However, over large distances that expansion accumulates until you reach points that are expanding at C, or above.
That galaxy is moving at a fairly ordinary pace compared to anything near to it. That entire region of the universe is moving away quickly.
This is where the red shift comes from.
Space is a big place.... (Score:2)
If it emitted this light 13 billion years ago then at that point it was the edge of the universe
We know that the universe has been expanding since it started, so we're not looking at the edge right now. We're looking at what used to be the edge.
What boggles my mind however, If at a mere 600 million years after the big bang the universe already expanded to that size. How big and vast must it be by now? Truly mindblowing. Almost literally when I try to imagine.
And Why Isn't It Backlit? (Score:2)
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Note that this glow isn't from the Big Bang itself. The universe was so hot (over a billion K) it wasn't transparent yet. There were no protons and neutrons, only a superheated quark soup. The signal WMAP captured was from about 400.000.000 years later: when the universe expanded and cooled enough to get transparent.
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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.
That gigantnormous flash bulb is on. Right now. It's called cosmic microwave background radiation [wikipedia.org]. Only we can't see it with the naked eye because of the expansion of the universe.
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].
No, no, no. That's not right. (Score:2, Funny)
The Earth is 6500 years old, or approximately 12000 metric years. The heavens were created at the same time, so we can only assume that the universe itself is 6500 years old, as well.
So if this galaxy was created 600 million years after the creation of the universe, then it exists 599,993,500 years in the future. Adjust for inflation and it's approximately 13.1 billion years in the future. We could be seeing our future selves.
But Armageddon is going to happen in 2012, right? Is God playing tricks on us
Can a galaxy form in such a short period of time? (Score:3, Interesting)
So can a galaxy be created in 600 million years?
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Theorists could spend 10 years working out that by best estimates 700 million years is the earliest, but it only takes (repeated) observation to prove them wrong.
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AGE vs SIZE of the unverse (Score:3, Interesting)
I am surprised to see so many comments without even one mentioning the difference between the AGE of the Universe (13.7 billion l.y. ) and the SIZE of the observable universe (radius 47 billion l.y.).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe [wikipedia.org]
From the Wiki Article:
The age of the Universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years. While it is commonly understood that nothing travels faster than light, it is a common misconception that the radius of the observable universe must therefore amount to only 13.7 billion light-years. This reasoning makes sense only if the Universe is the flat spacetime of special relativity; in the real Universe, spacetime is highly curved on cosmological scales, which means that 3-space (which is roughly flat) is expanding, as evidenced by Hubble's law. Distances obtained as the speed of light multiplied by a cosmological time interval have no direct physical significance.[11]
So, the light from this Galaxy actually traveled more than 13.7 billion years (I don't know how to make the conversion but probably around 45 billion ?)
XARG.
"At the edge of the universe" (Score:2, Informative)
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?
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hubble has a 2.4 m2 reflector. estimate the galaxy at 4x10E37 watts, with 2.5e18 photons per watt, and you get about 1200 photons per second. there are a LOT of stars in a galaxy.
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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.
It doesnt take all that many doublings to reach the end of the universe.
The difference between 8 light minutes (distance to the sun) and 12.1 billion light years only is 49.56 doublings.
The important point (Score:3, Funny)
At warp 9 (STNG scale) it would take round about 8.64 million years to get there.
Galatic Overloard (Score:2, Funny)
So, I can create a galaxy in less than 600 million years. If I do this, then nobody better complain when I become its Galatic Overloard!
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Yes, there's a limit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang#Recombination:_ca_377.2C000_years
When the universe was still too hot for atoms to form, photons couldn't get too far before hitting a free electron. Then the universe cooled enough for recombination of hydrogen ions and electrons, making the universe 'clear'.
So we can only see back to 377000 years after the big bang, then it's lost in the background microwave radiation.
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the universe was opaque to radiation until 400,000 years after the Big Bang, that's the very last time most of the CMB photons interacted with matter.
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You can see radiation from the big bang, but you can't see the light. Ever. The big bang itself didn't make any light. Photons simply couldn't exist in those conditions.
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The big bang itself didn't make any light. Photons simply couldn't exist in those conditions.
I have not considered that before! Great insight.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_background_radiation [wikipedia.org]
So we can theoretically see out to BB+~400k years
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Well, creating a 6000 light-year radius field of photons is certainly easier than creating a whole universe, especially if you've only got 7 days to do it in. And since the world will clearly end any day now, the field needn't be any bigger. You don't even both creating actual matter outside the solar system.
(actually it seems even easier to create a photon generating sphere around the solar system, or just the earth, and simulate everything - those pesky probes humans send out could be destroyed when the
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So you're saying God hacked up a sky-box?
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One thing to consider is that the speed of the expansion has been accelerating ever since it started.
Also "Considering how slowly the universe must have expanded in real terms"
As far as I understand 'slow' is not really a good description to describe what happened after the big bang. The expansion rate defied every form of physics as we know it.
But still, that universe at that place, in that form, at that time, we observing it, now, in this place, at this time.... ;-)
It doesn't make sense to me either
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Actually, we see the beginnings of the big bang all around us. It's the cosmic microwave background radiation [wikipedia.org]. Don't think of the radiation of the big bang as an explosion that would pass us up. Think instead of it as a cloud that filled the entire universe. As the universe expanded, the cloud st
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It isn't a distance or a scale factor: z is a pure number ratio of frequencies or wavelengths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift [wikipedia.org]
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... 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.
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No one is moving. Everything is sitting relatively still. The space between them, and everything else, is expanding. That expansion is uniform and fast.