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NASA, ESA, J. Richard (CRAL) and J.-P. Kneib (LAM). Acknowledgement: Marc Postman (STScI)
The giant cluster of elliptical galaxies in the centre of this image, called Abell 383, was used as a gravitational lens to study a galaxy that formed less than a billion years after the big bang. The galaxy's stars formed when the universe was just 200 million years old. The finding has implications for our understanding of how and when the first galaxies formed, and how the diffuse fog of neutral hydrogen that filled the early Universe was cleared.
A distant galaxy with stars that began forming just 200 million years after the big bang has been discovered. The finding addresses questions about when the first galaxies arose and how early the universe evolved, scientists report.
The galaxy was spotted with the Hubble Space Telescope. It is visible through a cluster of galaxies called Abell 383, whose powerful gravity bends the rays of light like a magnifying glass. The so-called gravitational lens amplifies light from the distant galaxy, making it appear 11 times brighter and allowing detailed observations.
Infrared data from Hubble and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show the galaxy's stars formed when the universe was 200 million years old. Observations with the W.M. Keck Observatory on Muna Kea in Hawaii revealed the observed light from the galaxy dates to when the universe was 950 million years old. The universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago.
"This challenges theories of how soon galaxies formed in the first years of the universe," Johan Richard of the Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon, Universita Lyon 1 in France, said in an image advisory. "It could even help solve the mystery of how the hydrogen fog that filled the early universe was cleared."
At some point in our universe’s early history, it transitioned from the so-called dark ages to a period of light, as the first stars and galaxies began to ignite. This starlight ionized neutral hydrogen atoms floating around in space, giving them a charge, NASA explained. Ultraviolet light could then travel unimpeded through what had been an obscuring fog.
The discovery of a galaxy possessing stars that formed only 200 million years after the big bang helps astronomers probe this cosmic reionization epoch. When this galaxy was developing, its hot, young stars would have ionized vast amounts of the neutral hydrogen gas in intergalactic space.
A population of similar galaxies probably also contributed to this reionization, but they are too faint to see without the magnifying effects of gravitational lensing. NASA's James Webb Telescope, scheduled to launch later this decade, will be able to see these faint galaxies without magnification.
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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Life begins at accretion disk!
I'm sensing a planned accretionhood joke in here somewhere...
"We must defund title 13 billion for Planned Accretionhood, for supporting the cannibalization of accreting galaxies. This is a bane on all unborn galaxies in the universe, and they must be stopped at all costs, for they are evil."
But young galaxies have rights. You cannot take away their control of their own heavenly bodies.
When the stars first ignited, was there a voice in the background that said "let there be light" ?
Fiat Lux!
Galaxy formation would come after star formation wouldn't it? There would be the early gaseous dark universe and then the first stars would coalesce and those would then accumulate into regions that would become a galaxy?
No, Mob, an accretion disc that would become the galaxy would form first. The stars that formed within that disc would already be in place in the forming galaxy.
If matter was initially equally distributed it could have gone either way. Stars formed and were drawn togther into galaxies or globs of matter collected into galaxies and started forming stars. Seems like a theoretical issue more than a concrete one. Galaxy clusters are still forming, galaxies are still merging. I would guess that it would be galaxy then star, but it is a guess. My guess is less informed than astronomers and astrophysicists, but theirs are still guesses even though they are informed ones.
Ok so here is my question: Where, or when did the galactic black holes come into play? I mean if one were to draw correlations between the formation of the solar system, and the formation of galaxies, wouldn't stand to reason that some sort of gravity well would have to exsist to help organize these galaxies into the shapes we know, instead of a coagulated mass of stars and dust?
I think galaxies look like stars circling the drain. They're going bye-bye.
Is there a reason that spiral galaxies, hurricanes and whirlpools look so similar in structure?
Are the supermassive black holes at the centers of such galaxies analogous to the low pressure "eye" of a hurricane and the hole of a drain?
Could there be a universal principle, in fractal form, which governs the emergence of all of these structures at both the terrestrial and the galactic scale?
would that be a combination of centrifugal force and a central suction (whether it be low pressure, suction of a drain effect, or gravity)? maybe in combination with friction/drag? I don't know this to be true, I have just always thought in those terms until you asked the question...
My thoughts exactly.
Galaxies, solar systems, hurricanes, drains, toilets, atoms. All seem to be circulating. Is the Universe? Do we perceive it to be expanding due to our position or due to some mathematical errors or unknown variables?
Hmmm... could the entire universe be an enormous spiral structure cycling around an unimaginably massive Universal Black Hole (UBH) core? I'd never thought of that. I don't think there's any data or measurements to suggest that is the case, but then, I don't know if anyone's ever looked at it that way.
If that were the case, would it result in any observational anomalies due to the frame dragging effect? Would the appearance of straight line viewing actually follow a curve of the spiral? What about the view in other directions? Could our view in all directions be trapped by the spirograph shaped smoke ring of the UBH's gravity? Would there be background radiation? If we "looked" far enough into the core would we "see" the surface of the UBH as a virtually smooth microwave radiation source?
I doubt it, but for the moment, it's kind of got my mind spinning...
Yeah, the frame dragging could be causing us to perceive the universe as expanding. Consider this: Venus moves faster than the Earth and Mars slower, but that is actually perception. Venus moves at a slower speed around the Sun than Earth, but objects in lower orbits orbit faster. So, from Earth's vantage point, if Venus, Earth and Mars were lined up, Venus and Earth would appear to be moving apart and Earth and Mars would appear to be moving apart - thus appearing to be "expanding" until Venus came around the Sun and we were approaching each other again.
OK, then to analogize, the movements of "nearby" galaxies away from ours, evidenced by the red shift of their light, could conceivably be a result of this sort of effect, but wouldn't there be some galaxies somewhere, which like venus in your example, which have circuited all the way 'round the UBH and would then be approaching our Milky Way again? Or is it possible that the universe is actually so big that we cannot even perceive these farthest "blueshifters" which are chasing us round the center, and therefore all we see are the nearer redshifters on our own "arm" of the universal spiral?
I wonder if a similar, smaller scale effect is observable in the local neighborhood of the Milky Way? Are the stars on our arm all slightly moving away from the sun, while the stars on the trailing arm, closer to the galactic center might be moving towards us? This should be verifiable.
Well, Venus moves away from us until it circles the Sun. And we move away from Mars until we circle the Sun.
But, yes, the Universal scale could be throwing off our perception and therefore we might not notice the "orbital" galactic movement.
Andromeda is moving toward us. Maybe it is in a lower 'arm' catching up with us, or in an outer 'arm' and we are catching up to it.
Looking at the stars in our galaxy would be an interesting experiment.
I keep waiting for one of the poeple who would know better to correct this line of discussion, but until they do...
If the big bang was the grandmother of all supernovas, then, like other grand explosions, some material would achieve escape velocity while the rest fell back in on itself...the same way stellar black holes are supposed to form , right?
Complete speculation, of course, but if fits with the UBH theory that MikeyMike mentioned...
Michael...want to end this madness with some perspective?
Yeah, Michael would be good. But I would still like an explanation as to why the thinking would not be sound, other than the math does not support it, unless of course you can show that there are not errors in the math or in the assumptions made.
Sorry - there has been a death in my family. I'm AFK (away from keyboard) for a while.
Sympathies. Take care of the loved ones.
My condolences to you Michael. Though I don't know you personally, I respect your knowledge and am saddened by your loss.
I'm sorry to read that. I hope you and yours are doing as well as possible.
Sorry to hear of your loss, Michael. Both my parents' deaths were sudden, Dad only lasted a few years after Mom died. Hopefully, your loss wasn't unexpected, but an event so final can't help but have an impact.
I get uncomfortable with statements such as...
I understand that it is the red shift of the light from this far off galaxy that allows astronomers to deduce it's age. It's the second part of the statement, "the universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago", that always gives me pause. Are we SURE? I know there's lots and lots of supposed evidence from theoretically reversing the expansion that we do observe to the data from the wMAP survey, but I remain unconvinced.
The Universe is 13.7 billion years old
this I know
for the Bible, Quran and Torah
tell me so.
Yes Mikey, they are pretty sure, they obviously cannot see all the way back to the beginning, for a couple of reasons, and there is also the fact that the hydrogen fog obscures anything that may have been forming sooner.
Is this so-called 'hydrogen fog' really 'visible' in some far, far off and long, long time ago manner, or is it just a theorized part of the big-bang process?
So far as I know, the WMAP (http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/) shows that the microwave background radiation is ALMOST the same everywhere, which is supposedly evidence for the initial sudden expansion of the universe, but there are also tiny variations which apparently later in the process give rise to galactic structures.
Also, something about the data is suposedly additional evidence for the whole dark matter/dark energy deal, but for the life of me I don't understand what this part of the evidence is and I remain skeptical about the very idea of "dark" stuff which cannot, for some reason, even be detected. Can anyone elaborate?
Those fictional works are just words in a long line of storytellers that were confused, terrified, and fascinated by the immense complexity of the world around them.
Grr stupid vine
Guys : to the question of universe spirality, I give you the link to the Millenium simulation of what the universe looks like - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Run. Enjoy.
Interesting, but I did not notice if they were positioning items based on where we see them NOW, or if they projected their movement to where they actually are TODAY, meaning, if it is 100,000 light years from us, then it has moved for 100,000 years from where we see it today. Note something we see that is 1000 light years away has only moved for about 1000 years and somthing 250,000 light years away has had a lot of time to move. Plug in the rate of movement with the time and find out where everything is now.
Or did they cover that and I missed it?
I don't know if they implicitly said they took that into account or not. I went to this link : www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/virgo/millennium/ and it looks like they did take in consideration the movements. Which raises this question, did they take into account the expansion of the universe?