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43 Comments
- cusscakes, on 10/29/2009, -5/+30They clearly didn't talk to my wife. Otherwise they would have known that I'M the most distant object in the universe
- 8thunder8, on 10/29/2009, -1/+19I'm no cosmologist, but I'm certain the cosmic dark ages did not end 900 to 800 million years ago. Perhaps 800 to 900 million years after the big bang... Bad National Geographic
- cthielen, on 10/29/2009, -0/+13Dating of distant light is almost always done through frequency analysis: light shifts slightly in frequency over time, so, for a given object, it must have started out in some frequency range, and you can take the difference between that and what is observed, as well as the constant speed of light, and calculate age.
- 4degrees, on 10/29/2009, -2/+10you are right, given the earth is only 4.5 billion years old. probably a typo.
- Jonjonr6, on 10/29/2009, -1/+7Ok, so if it's light coming from 13 billion light years away, wouldn't that mean the source or the light was 13 billion years old? Or is there a such thing as light traveling faster than the speed of.... light?
- jjvors, on 10/29/2009, -1/+6Really cool finding. Cosmology is one of my favorite topics, and having data into this early period of the universe is very exciting.
- mparker21311, on 10/29/2009, -2/+7To clear things up for people. A light-year is the distance it takes for light to reach an object in a year's time.
When we see a bright object in the sky, we're not seeing what's actually occurring now. We're seeing the light emitted in the past.
8 Billion light-years is 47,029,002,987,552,720,000,000,000 miles away from us. - NervousEnergy, on 10/29/2009, -1/+6Jonjonr6; yup, the source of the light happened 13 billion years ago. Light can't go faster than light.
- Groovydoo, on 10/29/2009, -1/+5This is not a rhetorical question it is an honest one: The nova took place 13-billion-years-ago since the event took place 13-billion light years away. The nova happened when the universe was only 600-million-light-years old yet we are 13-billion-light-years away. So does that means when the big bang happened, the universe was expanding faster than light itself or is the universe expanding just slower than the speed of light and it took this long for the nova's light to catch up??
- cthielen, on 10/29/2009, -1/+4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_B ... confirms it. They almost surely meant "lasted for 900 million years" not "ended 900 million years ago."
- drstock, on 10/29/2009, -0/+2Didn't HDF pretty much falsify Arp's theories?
- Snap65, on 10/29/2009, -1/+3D. All of the above.
- pw378, on 10/30/2009, -0/+2The big bang produced no visible light. It produces non-visible radiation which has already been viewed as cosmic background radiation.
- pw378, on 10/30/2009, -0/+2Visible light is just radiation.
So, when you say light, do you mean visible light or do you really mean radiation? If you mean visible light, then no, we will never see light from the 'beginning' since visible light didn't happen until the first stars formed which was a long time after the big bang.
If you mean radiation, then we already see light from the big bang, its called the cosmic background radiation, or CMB. - Alderon, on 10/29/2009, -1/+3How do they know this? Just ask'n not being of the science that dwells in star birth and all.
- pw378, on 10/30/2009, -0/+2Jonjonr6:
Actually, light that started moving toward us 13 billion years ago will take longer than 13 billion years to reach us. The reason is that while light is moving at a constant C, the space it is traveling through is expanding, so the light actually has to cross more than 13 billion light years of distance to reach us.
It can twist some people head up thinking about it, but it makes sense. - avianeddy, on 10/29/2009, -1/+2whats freaking ME out is what are we gonna see when the light from the BEGINNING of the universe reaches us.... what'll be beyond THAT ????!!!! AAAaaaa... (I'm scared)
- Qeveren, on 10/30/2009, -0/+1They would use the cosmological redshift of the observed spectrum to determine what the original frequency of the gamma rays were.
- lazyrussian, on 10/29/2009, -1/+2Yup, blocking you. Goodbye.
- drstock, on 10/29/2009, -0/+1It's called cosmic inflation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmolog ...
- avianeddy, on 10/30/2009, -0/+1yeah, but static is boring.
I mean, it's been on TV forEVER
:p - inactive, on 10/29/2009, -0/+1Won't there always be a most distant object found, it's just a matter of waiting for the light to hit us.
- hereticoftruth, on 10/29/2009, -0/+1Yes, I know how the red shift works. And I am serious about my question. Every gamma ray starts out at a specific frequency due to a specific event. And the specific question was: Do they know what that specific frequency was at it's origin for gamma rays? Maybe they have developed a gamma ray spectrum that they can work from but I never heard of it. Where can I find it?
- mattcarr1011, on 10/29/2009, -0/+1So if we moved quicker then light for some time, did we move beyond the reaches of the big bang light?
If so are we ( earth not you and me ) going to witness the big bang?
That would be a sweet explosion - ldailey06, on 10/29/2009, -0/+1"the cosmic dark ages..[began] /lasted from/ shortly after the big bang [and lasted] /until/ about 900 to 800 million years."
"/Astronomers think(delete)/ the first stars started forming during the dark ages."
""This means that a bright gamma-ray burst that [occurred when the universe was very young] could be detected /out to from the earliest times in the age of the universe/."
"...since a gamma[-]ray [burst] is the most intense [source of electromagnetic radiation] /type of light/ known." - UselessTrivia, on 10/29/2009, -0/+1Jonjonr6: I've had that same thought so many times. Cosmologists have a term to explain it called hyperinflation. It's this idea that in the early stages of the universe space was expanding faster than the speed of light, so there is light from the other side of the big bang that hasn't even reached us yet.
Or something.
Really the whole idea of hyperinflation just breaks my brain. It's a bit of a cop-out explanation that will almost certainly be replaced with a more sensible explanation once someone comes up with one. - durgil, on 10/29/2009, -0/+1I think it's a very good question... and you're not the only one puzzled by it. The cosmic inflation idea that drstock cites is one of the possible explanations.
- ldailey06, on 10/29/2009, -0/+1A light year is a unit of distance.
"The visible universe is thus a sphere with a diameter of about...93 billion light-years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_universe#Size ...
Yes, according to inflation, space-time did expand faster than the speed of light. - ssion, on 10/29/2009, -0/+0Too true.
- pfhayter, on 10/29/2009, -1/+1Says a troll with the name "heriticoftruth"
You're welcome for the meal. - Suricou, on 10/29/2009, -1/+1I asked that on Conservapedia, back when I trolled it. Their response was to immediatly ban my IP.
The standard creationist response is to mumble some half-remembered rambling about relativity, on the grounds that practically noone understands it even when used correctly. - Zoshchenko, on 10/29/2009, -2/+2This is fascinating and mind boggling. I'd like to hear what the people who visit the Creationist Museum think about this discovery.
- Suricou, on 10/29/2009, -2/+2Once again Creationists will be seen singing loudly with their fingers in their ears.
- directrix13, on 10/29/2009, -1/+1Your wife clearly didn't talk to my wife.
- avianeddy, on 10/29/2009, -1/+1would you like some Cocoa Puffs?
- blindhammer, on 10/29/2009, -4/+3Still questionable if you follow Halton Arp's work.
- hereticoftruth, on 10/29/2009, -2/+1Yes. People who tell the unpopular truth are branded as Heretics.
- Woah_G!, on 10/29/2009, -2/+1Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour
That's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way - RetroRufio, on 10/29/2009, -6/+4Definitely not a Cosmologist.
- inactive, on 10/29/2009, -7/+0Echo indeed....
- inactive, on 10/29/2009, -8/+1LOL Most distant object.
- hereticoftruth, on 10/29/2009, -17/+2"Shut up and believe what you are told, mushroom!" said the establishment. They don't know but they do believe. But you are free to join their religion if you want. You have that right. Just believe! Don't let facts get in the way!
- hereticoftruth, on 10/29/2009, -18/+1So, how do they determine the red shift of gamma rays? Are they part of some known and understood processes I am not aware of? What was the red shift observed? I am not one of the mushroom people. I want to know. What was the spectrum of the gamma ray burst? Gotcha, didn't I! You just presumed that the big bang cosmology was real and interpreted observation to fit your fantasy. That is not science, that is science fiction.
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