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A team of Caltech researchers that has spent years searching for the earliest objects in the universe now reports the detection of what may be the most distant galaxy ever found. In an article published August 28, 2015 in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Adi Zitrin, a NASA Hubble postdoctoral scholar in astronomy, and Richard Ellis—who recently retired after 15 years on the Caltech faculty and is now a professor of astrophysics at University College, London—describe evidence for a galaxy called EGS8p7 that is more than 13.2 billion years old. The universe itself is about 13.8 billion years old.
[...] "The surprising aspect about the present discovery is that we have detected this Lyman-alpha line in an apparently faint galaxy at a redshift of 8.68, corresponding to a time when the universe should be full of absorbing hydrogen clouds," Ellis says. Prior to their discovery, the farthest detected galaxy had a redshift of 7.73.
One possible reason the object may be visible despite the hydrogen-absorbing clouds, the researchers say, is that hydrogen reionization did not occur in a uniform manner. "Evidence from several observations indicate that the reionization process probably is patchy," Zitrin says. "Some objects are so bright that they form a bubble of ionized hydrogen. But the process is not coherent in all directions."
"The galaxy we have observed, EGS8p7, which is unusually luminous, may be powered by a population of unusually hot stars, and it may have special properties that enabled it to create a large bubble of ionized hydrogen much earlier than is possible for more typical galaxies at these times," says Sirio Belli, a Caltech graduate student who worked on the project.
"We are currently calculating more thoroughly the exact chances of finding this galaxy and seeing this emission from it, and to understand whether we need to revise the timeline of the reionization, which is one of the major key questions to answer in our understanding of the evolution of the universe," Zitrin says.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by marcello_dl on Monday September 07 2015, @01:19AM
> may have special properties that enabled it to create a large bubble of ionized hydrogen much earlier than is possible for more typical galaxies at these times," says Sirio Belli, a Caltech graduate student who worked on the project.
>"We are currently calculating more thoroughly the exact chances of finding this galaxy and seeing this emission from it, and to understand whether we need to revise the timeline of the reionization, which is one of the major key questions to answer in our understanding of the evolution of the universe," Zitrin says.
Is it a nice way to say that it should look younger, since we are looking so back in time? Because the whole folding of space itself in the big bang theory + this says we might have to reconsider a lot of stuff.
OT personally I root for the idea of a universe, infinite in both directions of time, with a creator entity behind it, just because people think it's logically impossible- in fact, denying it is logically impossible, see counterexample: mere humans devised lots of f(t) that a hypothetical traveller on t would take infinite time to visit, so a finite creator can come up with an abstraction who has infinite properties, if the universe were an abstraction for some creator plane of existence, the same applies.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @01:45AM
So do you take the hipster approach to other science topics? Maybe you root for the phlogiston theory because humans came up with this atomic theory stuff? Do you root for the humors idea to come back in vogue?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by anubi on Monday September 07 2015, @02:24AM
Instead of modding your reply, I will comment.
Its my hope that this forum remain a place where anyone can run something up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes or offers a cogent response of why some concept is not workable.
Neither was offered.
This subject is rife with belief, as ( to the best of my observations anyway ) nobody can demonstrate the solution and there are many camps of belief. Some theological ( which seem to me to be bred more of superstition than observation ) and some from extrapolation of observed behaviour of physics ( which I tend to place a lot more credibility to ).
One thing does strike me though, I feel that in this arena, I feel as a kitten just discovering its way out of the box momma-cat put them in. I have barely seen what I can see in the dining room from the box, much less everything outside. The astronomers through history have tried their damndest to see how big our playpen is, and every time we develop new observation technologies, our playpen's volume goes up by orders of magnitude. I do not see this trend ending anytime soon.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Monday September 07 2015, @11:54AM
science is observation -> theory -> prediction -> verification. When it stays there I have no problems with science. When folks laugh at the "turtles all the way down" hindu model without admitting that it's feasible to build a sphere made entirely of turtles on top of each other (put the first two against each other, both are still geometrically on top of each other, since the definition of top depends on the barycenter), is it THEM who have problems with science, or indians who have problems with hinduism?
When I see the big bang theory used as a proof for/against god I think THEY have problems with science, I have no problems with dis/belief in a hypothetical god either way.
I can root for whatever team as long as the game has not ended, it's not like it will make a difference to the outcome.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @02:30AM
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday September 07 2015, @03:04PM
> the observable aspects of your theory.
If you mean the no-big bang theory, OK, let's wait till it's perfected or falsified.
But I think from the rest of your comment that you refer to the metaphysical aspects I brought in, in that case I wrote "idea" not theory, so your comment is right but off topic. Every comment with objects outside the universe into the hypothetical domain of god is NOT science, obviously.
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