digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About

Universe's First Objects Possibly Seen

space.com — Astronomers might have seen the very first stars in the universe. If so, these are incredible stars, some 1,000 times as massive as the Sun.

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 19, 2006

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

53 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • darkzealot89, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18It is simply amazing how powerful our tech has come. It is also amazing to wonder just how much is out there for us to find.
  • einstevo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14There are no stars existing today that are 1,000,000 solar masses. Upper limits for stellar masses exist because of something called the eddington limit. The eddington limit describes the balance that needs to exist between the weight of stuff pushing downward and the gas pressure pushing that same chunk of stuff upwards in order to have a stable star. If 1,000,000 solar masses worth of matter happens to assemble itself in one place, it won't be able to form a star in equilibrium because the object will push itself apart. Earlier objects are thought to have larger masses because they are relatively pure in composition, meaning they are made mostly of hydrogen and helium in abundances produced at the big bang. Since then, stellar deaths have enriched the composition of the universe with heavier elements which have higher opacities in stellar atmospheres. These higher opacities effect the eddington limit causing a similar amount of mass to absorb more radiation, making it easier for a star to push itself apart.
  • forceflow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9The idea that we can see the beginning of time is simply mind blowing.
  • converge, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14because it's hosted in space!
  • mitrovarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8For a star? Yes, it really is. The largest supermassive stars known are around 150 solar masses. Stars of around 1000 solar masses are thought to be impossible to form at this point in history, because stars over about 120 solar masses are too hot and unstable to survive longer than a couple of million years. They burn too hot and release too much light, burning off their own outer layers nearly immediately. If you look at known supermassive stars of around 120-150 solar masses such as the Pistol Star and Eta Carinae, they all are surrounded by nebulae of material they cast off

    In the ancient past when Population III stars formed, larger stars may have been possible. Back then, the universe contained only hydrogen, helium, and a little lithium. Stars currently have two hydrogen burning cycles, the slow proton-proton chain, and the CNO cycle. Large, heavy stars operate almost entirely by the CNO cycle, which uses carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen as catalysts to fuse hydrogen very quickly. The first generation of stars, however, did not have any of these catalyst elements available, and would have operated only by the proton-proton chain. This would have slowed fusion down dramatically and made the stars much cooler and fainter than they would have been otherwise, preventing them from exploding prematurely and allowing them to grow much larger than current stars.
  • RichPowers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8If you want to further blow your mind, listen to this recording of the early universe. It's amazing how we can actually *listen* to the formation of the cosmos

    http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BBSound.html
  • DarthBibble, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@sigginike90

    But if God created these wonderful things, then surely God is wonderful, and we should inquire as to what created God. Oh, wait, God just exists. Well doesn't the universe "just exist" to atheists? They don't even need a god to explain the "just existingness" of the universe.
  • AnteChronos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8@sigginike90
    "And i think atheists are just as ignorant as religious people if not more so. Because they completely deny the existence of god. How can you know he doesn't exist. This is illogical."

    Not at all. I deny the existence of everything that lacks sufficient proof. If I didn't, then I'd have to believe in every entity ever conceived just because I couldn't *prove* that it didn't exist. Here's an example: I'll bet you deny that Zeus, Odin, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster exist. But how can you know they don't exist? That is, by your reasoning at least, illogical. So either it's perfectly logical to deny the existence of something without proof, or you yourself are being illogical.


    "And i agree with PaulCarus that when looking at some of the amazing things in the universe it's hard to not believe in some sort of a higher being."

    That's a slippery slope. See, some sort of higher being would be even *more* amazing than the universe, so, by your reasoning, we'd have to postulate an even higher being that created that one, ad infinitum. And don't try to pull the "God is eternal" argument in an attempt to stop the chain. We don't have enough scientific understanding of the origin of the universe to say for certain that the universe itself isn't eternal, so when it comes to stopping the infinite regression into higher and higher order deities, it makes sense to just say that the universe itself is eternal and be done with it.


    "There is so much unknown about the universe such as the rules that apply to this universe(gravity, speed of light...) where do they come from?"

    Why do they have to "come from" anywhere? Plus, anyone who uses the "the universe is just too perfect" argument fails to realize that, if the universe were not such that life could exist, we wouldn't be here contemplating how "the universe is so imperfect". In other words, the only types of existence that we can contemplate are the ones in which we exist and are, thus, "perfect".
  • Waterispoison, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"If you would know anything about science you would know that nothing happens "just because". And i think the universe is no different and it probably has a very logical explanation for how it came to be."

    Yet you say God exists "just because"...Jeeze, I don't understand one can be so hypocritical.
  • RichPowers, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Why is Space.com always slow as a mule?
  • DarthBibble, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10@PaulCarus

    I'm going to stoop down to your level of thought here:

    The universe is eternal and has no creator.
  • kronix2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8"God is eternal and has no creator."

    Brahman is eternal and has no creator.
    The Flying Spaghetti Monster is eternal and has no creator.
    My ass is eternal and has no creator.

    See a pattern emerging? We can all make nonsensical claims.

    If God's existence doesn't require a creator, then neither does the universe's existence. Please, try to be consistent.
  • DarthBibble, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@sigginike90

    What? I'm not saying it came about illogically. I'm saying that the presumption that God just exists and that's that is an illogical explanation. And cut out the sweeping generalizations, my parents are atheists too and I don't hate them at all. Many of the world's smartest people are atheists, and most of them are not 13 year old fat kids who hate themselves.
  • drizek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6If you really want to believe in God, then you owe it to yourself to understand the other side of the argument. Go read Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion", he explains exactly what the other side believes, and how evolution and the universe have nothing to do with chance.

    @sigginike, that goes for you too. Athiests do not say god doesnt exist, just that his existence is extremely improbable.
  • DarthBibble, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8So... it's not random that objects in the universe existed for longer times than others? Well gee, I'm converted.
  • sigginike90, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You can't hear sound in space.
  • starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3>Because they completely deny the existence of god.
    >How can you know he doesn't exist.

    so the test then is that if you can dream it up and i deny its existance then... there is something wrong with me? religious slight of hand and broken logic.

  • einstevo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3i agree that the absence of CNO would surely allow for the formation of more massive stars but I don't know which process has greater effect. We'd have to consult the literature. Unfortunately this is final exam week and i can only afford to procrastinate on message boards and not journal websites....
  • darkzealot89, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://duggmirror.com/space/Universe_s_First_Objects_Possibly_Seen/
  • Agret, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8"It never ceases to amaze me how people can say God's creation just happened by mere chance."
    I never claimed god was created, he just doesn't exist. If you believe god was created, who created god? I can't see god in these pictures, how is that a testament to me?
  • baxtermaddux, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3i hope one day i can use a time machine to go back and get Gallileo and bring him back to the future , and see his reaction to these pictures.
    on second thought. i think i would just take these telescopes back in time to save a trip
  • joeydoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3From the looks of that picture, space is burning. Maybe that's the edge of the universe.

    Maybe that's the leading edge of the big bang.
  • mitrovarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@einstevo

    I had thought that the most important factor in the higher mass of population III stars was the lack of heavy elements necessary to complete the CNO stellar fusion cycle, not the higher opacity. Do you know which of these factors was relatively more important?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2WTF????
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The picture on the left looks like the render clouds filter in photoshop.

    Not saying that's what it is, it just looks like it.
  • rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Hear no reason, See no reason, Speak no reason.
  • the_d, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Eh... It was a Douglas Adams joke. Too obscure, I guess.
  • fenderjazz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They're not just arbitrary frequencies, though. By taking this cosmic microwave background radiation, you can tell how "bunched up" everything was at the beginning of our universe. You can use those clumps to come up with a feasible frequency of a sound wave (which would have happened. You can get sonic waves in things other than air). However, those frequencies would have been far too low for our ears to pick up, as can be seen from the microwave background radiation.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understand it.
  • DRTED, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Human ears may not be able to listen in, but dog ears can, now what nerdo?
  • radu79, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And the story from NASA: http://digg.com/space/NASA_Telescope_Picks_Up_Glow_of_Universe_s_First_Objects (or direct link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer-20061218.html )
  • DarthBibble, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No one has a mirror? :(
  • starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2>Because they completely deny the existence of god.
    >How can you know he doesn't exist.

    so if you can dream it up and i deny its existance then... there is something wrong with me? religious slight of hand and broken logic.

  • fenderjazz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Burnt, there are no stars (that we know of, anyways) that are millions of times larger than our own. One of the largest stars we know today (KY Cygni) is about 1500 times the size of our own sun.

    And as for the recording of the Big Bang posted earlier, that is a simulation, not an actual recording. The actual sound from the Big bang would be at frequencies too low for the human ear to pick up.
  • aristotle0dude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@kronix2: Yeah, the pattern is that you are an ***** and the whole lot of you have perverted science into something that it is not. Science is a tool for discovery that humanity can use to expand our understanding of how the universe works. Science, by that definition is not in conflict with religion. It only comes into conflict when people with axes to grind pervert it into a form of religion or dogma.

    The ***** on digg are not atheists. Atheists don't care what other people believe. These jerks are anti-theists. They are on an unholy war against religion because they either are uncomfortable with their beliefs or are simply self centered *****.
  • Darkness123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1RichPowers: Wow thanks, that is awesome
  • einstevo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i'm sorry you guys, but i'm going to have to lay the smackdown on this thread and pick on scientific inaccuracies. First off, the "sound" that they're defining isn't a conventional sound by any means. The guy took angular temperature fluctuations, fit the data with sinusoids and produced a .wav file with those frequencies. The frequencies drop as time goes on because the temperature variations in the universe spread out. ie. "the universe gets more bassy" So I don't see what you're talking about here fenderjazz; the guy arbitrarily maps angular frequencies to time frequencies so there's no basis behind saying that the "actual" sound from the big bang is at frequencies too low to hear.
  • pantsbandit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Universe's only object possibly seen, not on main street.
  • burnt1ce85, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21000 times only? some stars now are over a million times larger than our sun and stars in the early time of the universe are suppose to be much larger than todays. correct me if im wrong.
  • Shaman666, on 10/12/2007, -10/+10And to think it's only about 6,000 years old!!!!

    (atheist sarcasm folks, nothing to see here, move along...)
  • einstevo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0the WMAP data that he's talking about is a map of the sky in temperature. You point the microwave telescope at a spot in the sky and after reducing the data, you know the temperature of the cosmic microwave background at that spot. If you move the telescope slightly you'll see a different temperature. The temperature that you see changes as you change the telescope's pointing angle. Therefore temerature varies as a function of angle. The variation is periodic at a multiple angular wavelengths (lengths of arc on the sky that characterize the temperature changes) so the author measured those frequencies in units of "per degree on the sky". All frequencies are measured as "per" something. Sound is measured in hertz which is "per second". The author took frequencies in "per degree" and made them into Hz which can be played over a speaker. That's the arbitrary change that i'm talking about.
  • dmoney22, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
  • the_d, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Relatively speaking, !000 times more massive than our sun isn't that huge.
  • redforty, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2weird. Duggmirror.com is down as of 4:14pm PST 12-18-06
  • fenderjazz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Touché.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Works fine for me :)
  • sigginike90, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1@drizek
    There is nothing delusional about not ruling out the existence of higher being or an afterlife. That's just logical. And i think the definition of an atheist is that he doesn't believe in god. I consider myself to be agnostic(which is not ruling out the possibilities of god or an afterlife).

    @DarthBibble
    You really think the universe just exists? I hate how atheist are always smug and think they know better, "I'M AN ATHEIST, NOW THAT I AM 13 YEARS OLD I KNOW THAT SANTA AND GOD DON'T EXIST!!! ARGH I'M ANGRY AT MY PARENTS, I'M FAT AND UGLY AND NOBODY LIKES ME"
    If you would know anything about science you would know that nothing happens "just because". And i think the universe is no different and it probably has a very logical explanation for how it came to be.

  • sigginike90, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1@DarthBibble

    There's alot of irony in that you don't realize that you know just as well what the truth is in what you're talking about as PaulCarus.
  • sigginike90, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1"I never claimed god was created, he just doesn't exist. If you believe god was created, who created god? I can't see god in these pictures, how is that a testament to me?"

    By "god's creation" he means the universe, artard. And i think atheists are just as ignorant as religious people if not more so. Because they completely deny the existence of god. How can you know he doesn't exist. This is illogical. And i agree with PaulCarus that when looking at some of the amazing things in the universe it's hard to not believe in some sort of a higher being. There is so much unknown about the universe such as the rules that apply to this universe(gravity, speed of light...) where do they come from? That to me is the biggest mystery.
  • sigginike90, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2@converge

    HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH ohh hilarious haha
  • Agret, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1"It is simply amazing how powerful our tech has come"
    hahaha digg down, that was terrible. But yes i do agree, our technology has come a long way in a very short timespan, I just can't help but wonder where we'd be now if the Romans were still around, probably be on Mars already.
  • Fetching more discussions...
    Show 51 - 53 of 53 discussions

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...


© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.