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Space Science

Hubble Sees Most Distant Star Ever, 28 Billion Light-Years Away 124

Posted by msmash from the breakthroughs dept.
The Hubble Space Telescope has glimpsed the most distant single star it's ever observed, glimmering 28 billion light-years away. And the star could be between 50 to 500 times more massive than our sun, and millions of times brighter. From a report: It's the farthest detection of a star yet, from 900 million years after the big bang. Astronomers have nicknamed the star Earendel, derived from an Old English words that means "morning star" or "rising light." A study detailing the findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature. This observation breaks the record set by Hubble in 2018 when it observed a star that existed when the universe was around four billion years old. Earendel is so distant that the starlight has taken 12.9 billion years to reach us. This observation of Earendel could help astronomers to investigate the early years of the universe.

"As we peer into the cosmos, we also look back in time, so these extreme high-resolution observations allow us to understand the building blocks of some of the very first galaxies," said study coauthor Victoria Strait, a postdoctoral research at the Cosmic Dawn Center in Copenhagen, in a statement. "When the light that we see from Earendel was emitted, the Universe was less than a billion years old; only 6% of its current age. At that time it was 4 billion lightyears away from the proto-Milky Way, but during the almost 13 billion years it took the light to reach us, the Universe has expanded so that it is now a staggering 28 billion lightyears away."
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Hubble Sees Most Distant Star Ever, 28 Billion Light-Years Away

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  • Obligatory (Score:3)

    by Dictator For Life ( 8829 ) on Thursday March 31, 2022 @11:45AM (#62405656) Homepage
    "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that's just peanuts to space.”

  • "When the light that we see from Earendel was emitted, the Universe was less than a billion years old; only 6% of its current age. At that time it was 4 billion lightyears away from the proto-Milky Way, but during the almost 13 billion years it took the light to reach us, the Universe has expanded so that it is now a staggering 28 billion lightyears away."

    I am getting confused by these 4/13/28 billion numbers.

    If this star still exists today (which is in itself a suspect statement: what does "today" mean over such distances unless we are in some Star Trek or Foundation universe with warp drives or hyperspace transport?), it would be 28 billion light years away. But perhaps this star only existed for 10 billion years (expected life time of our sun, which seems to be a third-generation star). So what is there at this 28 billion light years distance? Perhaps n

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      According to https://www.space.com/hubble-t... [space.com],

      He also noted this star was distant, but not old. "We see the star as it was 12.8 billion years ago, but that does not mean the star is 12.8 billion years old," Welch said. Instead, it's probably just a few million years old and never reached old age.

      "Given its mass, it almost certainly has not survived to today, as more massive stars tend to burn through their fuel faster and thus explode, or collapse into black holes, sooner," he added of Earendel. "The oldes

      • Thanks to Hubble though, we can just watch it for 12.8 Billion years to find out what happens to it. Except we can't of course, because our Sun will die far before that.

        In a way, it's cool that we can bring "the lifetime of the solar system" into meaningful conversations.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mmell ( 832646 )
          I want them to aim the Webb telescope at this object (when the telescope is fully tested and tuned, that is).

          • Me too! Hard to imagine that grants aren't currently being written to do just that (and more). Cheers!

          • The proposal for telescope time has probably already been submitted.

            You do realise that the typical time between proposing a study using a particular asset, and those observations being made, is several years? And there's probably a period of a year or so when the proposal is going between the submitting astronomers and the technical review committees, before being passed up to the actual time-allocation committee.

            So, data maybe in 2025, next paper in about 2027. Don't hold your breath.

        • I thought our sun was one of the stars that we believe will last for ~100Trillion years. Trillion, not billion. That said, the sun will expand in size covering the distance from where the sun is today and somewhere past Mars and before Jupiter. So Earth will be annihilated in time no matter way but it's going to be on the scale of another dozen billion years or so.

          • It's been a while since I was in a science class but I really think it was closer to like 5-10 billion years. Once it goes Big Red it eventually hits a max size then begins to turn into a dwarf star before eventually burning out. Earth, as you said, will be engulfed during the Big Red expansion.

            Things could of changed in science and new definitions or understanding, but that's what I recalled from my science courses.

          • I thought our sun was one of the stars that we believe will last for ~100Trillion years. Trillion, not billion.

            There are lifetime estimates for the smallest of stars that go up into the trillion (thousand billion) range, but not any I recall going that high. You're getting into the evaporation timescale for small black holes, or the cooling time of neutron stars territory there. Those smallest stars are in the region of several percent of a solar mass (a hundred or so Jupiter masses).

            That said, the sun wil

    • Space has expanded considerably since the photons we're seeing now were first emitted. So the star itself was shining about a billion years after the Big Bang (12.5 billion years ago or so), but space itself has expanded, so the actual distance between us and the star is now 28 billion years away. As to whether the star is still there, well probably not. It's considerably more massive than our sun, so it likely went super nova billions of years ago, and is now either a neutron star or a black hole. Spotting

    • HTH. I also recommend a beer or two (or your inebriant of choice) as well.

      If the universe is only 14 billion years old, how can it be 92 billion light years wide? [youtube.com]

      How Can We See 46.1 Billion Light-Years Away In A 13.8 Billion Year Old Universe? [forbes.com]

      Off-topic: what is going on with Slashdot lately, I'm getting "internal server errors" all the time.

      Slashdot is run by a media company rather than technology enthusiasts. Ad-Views and Click-Rates are more important than Uptime.

    • So, did we really "see" a star at 28 billion light years of distance? Is this statement meaningful in any way?

      From my understanding, the media focuses on the distance. However, astronomers actually care about time. Looking a celestial objects so far away gives us more insight into what the universe was like just after The Big Bang.

      What the star looks like today isn't relevant to the questions astronomers are trying to answer.

    • Agreed the current state of that locality will be completely different "now" and none of us will live to see it, let alone the human race? I mean we are in the 5,032,255,000,000,000,000th day of creation. Plus or minus 73,000,000,000 days. Now about that off-topic: All the modded and unabbreviated comments are 1, I see 2 now and then recently. This is after a complete failure of the modding system, I dunno, a week ago? Any explanation from the editors I missed?

    • I am getting confused by these 4/13/28 billion numbers.

      If this star still exists today (which is in itself a suspect statement: what does "today" mean over such distances unless we are in some Star Trek or Foundation universe with warp drives or hyperspace transport?), it would be 28 billion light years away. But perhaps this star only existed for 10 billion years (expected life time of our sun, which seems to be a third-generation star). So what is there at this 28 billion light years distance? Perhaps nothing, or some remnants, or another star may have formed from that material in the mean time.

      You are right in the sense that we really don't know what is happening right now at that point 28 billions light years from now. Hell we dont know whats happening at the star next door, though I suppose we will in 4 years.

      Arguably from the perspective of that photon striking the CCD of the telescope however, what happened 12 billion light years ago in that stars relativistic frame happens right now (At the speed of light, the travellers time is instantaneous from the travellers perspective, alas the only th

    • If this star still exists today ...

      It probably doesn't still exist. Supermassive stars burn hot, and die young.

      But as you say, what does "today" mean, in this context? There is no way of observing the state of the star right now, because the only way for information to get from the star to our observers is via photons, and as those travel at finite speed, we are looking at ancient history. This is actually beneficial in studying the evolution of the universe, because there are kind of built-in historical records, better than fossils. If you

  • The article begins by saying the star is "glimmering 28 billion light-years away." It then says "the starlight has taken 12.9 billion years to reach us."

    If something is 28,000,000,000 light-years away, light from it takes 28,000,000,000 years to reach us. If starlight takes 12,900.000,000 years to reach us, the star is 12,900.000,000 light-years away. That is how the distance of a "light-year" is defined.

    Of course, the star is moving. There is significant red-shift indicating significant speed. Thus, I

    • The star itself isn't traveling that fast, space itself is expanding. The expansion rate of the universe is not governed by the speed of light.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Thank you for this answer. I was wondering the same thing.

        • There's a nifty post a ways above here that explains it; search for "rubber band". (And if you have mod points, mod him/her up.)

      • That is a fascinating reference, which specifically addresses "faster-then-light expansion"...

        While special relativity prohibits objects from moving faster than light with respect to a local reference frame where spacetime can be treated as flat and unchanging, it does not apply to situations where spacetime curvature or evolution in time become important. These situations are described by general relativity, which allows the separation between two distant objects to increase faster than the speed of light

    • The article begins by saying the star is "glimmering 28 billion light-years away."

      Given its size and brightness, the star probably died long ago anyway.

    • I have read about this discrepancy before, not just in this case. I don't understand it. Is it something to do with the expansion of the universe?

  • I'm guessing that it was not named Earendel simply because of the Old English meaning, but because of the reference to Tolkien.

    Earendil bore a Silmaril, and he and his ship became the morning/evening star.

    • Did they happen to spot Elwing standing next to Earendel aboard Vingilot

    • I'm guessing that it was not named Earendel simply because of the Old English meaning, but because of the reference to Tolkien.

      Earendil bore a Silmaril, and he and his ship became the morning/evening star.

      Tolkein knew the Old English tale of course, and liked it enough to incorporate a version of it into the mythology he constructed. I was lucky enough to attend a lengthy discussion of the topic by Tolkein scholar Rachel Fulton Brown [uchicago.edu] at UChicago.

      • Tolkien incorporated some of our world's stars and constellations into his story, such as Orion - "the Swordsman of the Sky, Menelvagor with his shining belt."

  • Since stars become dimmer the farther away they are how do we tell a dim nearby star from a bright far away star? Does the motion of all tracked objects relative to each other allow us to create a proper field of view that includes relative distances?

  • Chris Rock. Will Smith has a mean right cross.

  • I realize that the light from this star that we are seeing now shone from 12.9 billion light years away.

    The universe is roughly 13.7 billion years old, and the most commonly accepted cosmology indicates that everything began in a singularity. If this star appears to be 12.9 billion light years away now then that would mean that when the universe was just 800 million years old, it had still grown enough in size from just that singularity fast enough that its position in space could be far further apart f

  • A galaxy cluster is in line between us and the star and acting as a giant magnifying glass; "magnified by a factor of thousands". What we see here is a badly smeared image of the star, possibly arriving in multiple views, and that will give us a spectral signature. Interesting but I don't expect anything earthshaking.

    • They can reverse the distortion if they know enough about the gravity wells

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Klaxton ( 609696 )

        Could be, but right now they don't know if it is one star or two.

      • if they know enough about the gravity wells

        Which is exactly the point. We have a simple model of the mass distribution of the lensing galaxy (say a point mass for the baryonic matter, and a uniform spherically-distributed mass for the dark matter), but the reality is likely to be different. Just not different enough to give a good reason to choose this 3-component model over that 3-component model.

        In theory, you're right. In practice, the signal: noise ratio isn't good enough. It'll improve, slowly.

  • Armageddon is upon us! Repent, ye sinners!

  • We saw something 13 billion light years away. End of story.

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