Hubble Neatly Captures Messier's Ancient Stars

New submitter DevotedSkeptic writes "Hubble has produced a crisp image of the Messier 56 Globular Cluster. Messier originally noted that this object was nebula without stars. When he originally viewed the cluster in 1779, telescopes were not powerful enough to see more than a fuzzy ball. The crisp focused view we get from Hubble enables us to easily see the globular cluster and ancient stars contained within. Comparing observations from Hubble with results from the standard theory of stellar evolution, scientists have calculated the age Messier 56 at 13 billion years."

its

[Anonymous Coward]

its full of stars

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[Sulphur]

its full of stars

Thirteen billion years to slashdot.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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[mcswell]

The problem is not that at any given moment, a planet in this cluster would be inimical to life. The problem is that (as I understand it) planets there do not have stable orbits. Going from cold enough to freeze CO2, for example, to hot enough to melt lead is not likely to lead to stable atmospheres, or even any atmosphere.

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[Crosshair84]

Please explain and demonstrate how you get life from non-life. Until biologists get to that point, your view is nothing more than blind faith. You don't know, I don't know, but what we DO know about life is that even its simplest forms is mind boggling complex. Hundreds of thousands of computer code base pairs in even the simplest single celled organism and no realistic theory as to how it got there in the first place. (No, chance is NOT an explanation. "The Monkeys typing Shakespeare theorem" has shown to

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[account_deleted]

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[Byrel]

Regardless of how ridiculous you may feel a scientific statement to be, citing an unrelated experiment and indulging in ad hominem is not appropriate or helpful. The basic claim was clearly falsifiable: the complexity of a simple living organism is sufficiently great as to make it unlikely to have developed on any other planet in the universe. What, pray tell, does an experiment demonstrating the production of amino acids with a spark demonstrate? That it is possible for a system of some complexity to devel

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[account_deleted]

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[Crosshair84]

Oh Lord...one of those that believes what some 1800 year dead goat herder wrote about some 2000+ year dead guy, right? Its called LIGHTNING friend, and its already shown that complex chemicals form when you zap base chemicals repeatedly, enjoy the wiki article [wikipedia.org] about the experiements done a half a century ago.

As opposed to an Atheism: The belief that there was nothing & nothing happened to nothing & then nothing magically exploded for no reason creating everything & then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason which then turned into dinosaurs.

We can exchange insults back and forth all day, but ridicule is not an argument, you're the one who brought religion into this, not me. I'm not going to fall for your diversion. You'll have to do better than that and give evidence to

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[robsku]

Oh Lord...one of those that believes what some 1800 year dead goat herder wrote about some 2000+ year dead guy, right? Its called LIGHTNING friend, and its already shown that complex chemicals form when you zap base chemicals repeatedly, enjoy the wiki article [wikipedia.org] about the experiements done a half a century ago.

As opposed to an Atheism: The belief that there was nothing & nothing happened to nothing & then nothing magically exploded for no reason creating everything & then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason which then turned into dinosaurs.

I think you're post makes some really great points, but I want to point out that this is not a claim I would expect from any atheist, nor scientist. And I'm not atheist nor christian either - I'm just bored of reading all these "nothing came from nothing" statements attributed to atheists usually by christian nutjobs with little understanding of what they are talking about (anti-theism).

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[Crosshair84]

The point of the response is not to be a serious argument, but to simply apply the "Reductio ad absurdum" fallacy to Atheism in the same way Atheists apply it to Christianity. (Whose knowledge of Christianity frequently seems to be limited to that found in a coloring book.) I was using it to simply point out that ridicule is not an argument and does nothing to advance a discussion.

There of course IS an argument that can be formulated against Atheisim that goes along those lines, mainly the problem of an

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[R3d M3rcury]

My God, you beat me to it.

The Day we Found the Universe

[esldude]

http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-We-Found-Universe/dp/0307276600/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345962369&sr=8-1&keywords=the+day+we+discovered+the+universe#reader_0307276600 [amazon.com] Delightful book about how we came to figure out there was more than the milky way, and just how much more. Details the history of the instruments used, the scientists involved and the ideas that battled it out until we understood how big things were. The Hubble is in the lineage of important instruments helping us learn how big all of space is. All the way back to 13 billion years or so of it.

Lessons for editors, #402

[wonkey_monkey]

"Hubble has produced a crisp image of the Messier 56 Globular Cluster. Messier originally noted that this object was a nebula without stars. When he originally viewed the cluster in 1779, telescopes were not powerful enough to see more than a fuzzy ball. The crisp focused view we get from Hubble enables us to easily see the globular cluster and the ancient stars contained within. Comparing observations from Hubble with results from the standard theory of stellar evolution, scientists have calculated the age of Messier 56 at 13 billion years."

And this was an easy one.

Uhm, yes. Over 7 billion that we know of.

[VortexCortex]

I wonder if there is a God of Gods?

Or do you? A question only you can answer...

And do the Gods go around killing each other in the name of themselves?

Yes.

And are there Gods who don't believe in Gods?

Yes.

What would those be called?

On this planet they're known as Humans, regardless of whether they believe in themselves.

How does Mitt Romney fit in this?

The Universe is really big; Yes, large enough for even his ego. The planet on the other hand...

Can be find a way?

No, "be" isn't a proper subject.

And if Romney becomes God, and he dies (Gods die?), does that mean Ryan becomes a God?

Woah, slow down. Of course gods die. Even the mythical ones have been dying ever since we started dreaming them up. See also: Greek Mythology.

When a god dies it doesn't spawn a new god, otherwise that "When Animals Attack" show would have an ending more like "Planet of the Apes".

My God, the guy is barely out of diapers! And what of George Burns?

I'm pretty sure "My God" implies slavery... George Burns was the best God, IMO.

Really?

[pease1]

Really slow news day. This is a pretty photo looking for a press release, IMHO. Today, even moderate amateur telescopes resolve M-56. That they improved the H-R diagram using HST, is good science, but hardly /. worthy.

13 Billion Years!

[Evil Pete]

So, at 13 billion years old then this gobular cluster contains stars that are almost as old as the Universe, and older than our galaxy. Makes you wonder, if there are any worlds there (I know probaby metal poor) then any nascent life would have had so much time to get going, even under the feeble light of a red dwarf, that it could well be anything by now. Fascinating.

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[shoor]

How is it possible that they date the light we see from this messier's star cluster to be about 13 billion years old?

I'm not an astronomer but I read 'science for the layman' type books and watch the documentaries on PBS. I was wondering about the age of these stars as stated in the article compared to the age of the universe myself. But, they aren't saying the light we see is 13 billion years old, anymore than the light we see from the sun is 5 billion years old.

Presumably these stars formed in one of the first galaxies, and they've been around ever since, somehow eventually being captured as a group by the Milky Way.