SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Hubble Space Telescope Spots Oldest and Farthest Star Known
Astronomers announced on Wednesday the discovery of the farthest and oldest star ever seen, a dot of light that shined 12.9 billion years ago, or just 900 million years after the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe.
That means the light from the star traveled 12.9 billion light-years to reach Earth.
The finding was part of efforts using the Hubble Space Telescope to search for some of the universe's farthest and earliest galaxies. By a lucky coincidence, the astronomers were able to discern a single star system within one of those galaxies.
[...] The star spotted by Mr. Welch and his colleagues possesses what astronomers call a red shift of 6.2, far higher than the previous record-holder for most distant single star. That star, reported in 2018, had a red shift of 1.5, corresponding to when the universe was about four billion years old.
The researchers nicknamed the new star Earendel — Old English for "morning star." If it is a single star, the astronomers estimate that it is a big one — some 50 times the mass of our sun. It could also be a system of two or more stars.
The alignment of Earendel and the galaxy cluster will persist for years, so Earendel will be one of the targets during the first year of observations by the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope, which has a larger mirror than Hubble and gathers light at the longer infrared wavelengths.
A highly magnified star at redshift 6.2
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04449-y
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @08:55PM
Is there any possibility we can harvest the hydrogen fuel off this object to secure our energy future? It's just a question.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @08:58PM
The Big Bang ran from 2007 to 2019. 2022 - 2007 900,000,000.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @09:12PM (5 children)
"Shined"? Simple past tense? What is happening to the American English? First everyone starts saying "pleaded" for the perfectly correct "pled", and no doubt we will have people who "bleeded" to death. It is called the Perfect tense, a past that is completed, as in what this star did 12.9 billion years ago, so it should say:
Next; the pluperfect tense, and the future perfect, and the optative case for future past events.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @09:34PM (2 children)
> It is called the Perfect tense, a past that is completed...
BZZZT. The perfect tense is actually a recent past that is ongoing. "I have gone to the shops" = I am still at the shops.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @09:55PM (1 child)
It is worse than I thought. Perfect is completed action. Simple past is used for continuing action, often with a gerund, to construct the past progressive case. But then it would be:
But, you know, it really has completed all that shining 12.9 billion years ago, and may not even still exist, so the perfect tense is more appropriate. Definitely not "shined", however.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @10:44PM
It depends on your definition of time, or simultaneity. I'll wait.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @09:37PM
☐ 🇬🇧 traditional English
☒ 🇺🇸 simplified English
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @09:48PM
as we are looking at it now, is it not present tense
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday March 31 2022, @09:18PM
It should be "Eärendil."
"Earendel" is the cheap Chinese knock-off that will do nothing to vanquish Shelob.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @11:06PM (2 children)
What's the likelihood that they'd find the oldest *and* the furthest star in the same place? Sounds like NASA's PR team is at it again.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday March 31 2022, @11:24PM (1 child)
They clarify that Methuselah aka HD 140283 is the oldest known star, and is only 200 light years away.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/record-broken-hubble-spots-farthest-star-ever-seen [nasa.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_140283 [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_stars [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2022, @08:54AM
This is really an apples-and-oranges situation.
HD 140283 is a nearby star which is very old. In this case, the star is very old.
Earendel is a star that is not very old, by the standards of stars, but the light is very old, as it has traveled for 12.9 billion years to reach us. I am not sure the age of the star itself has been estimated yet, although I'm sure astronomers will try to do so. Finding a Population III star (one that formed from primordial hydrogen, without any material from earlier generations of stars) is one of the "holy grails" of astronomy.
But the actual stars themselves probably formed at close to the same time!
It is a little like comparing a 90 year old person to an 80 year old photograph of a ten year old child. Is one of them older, or are they the "same" age?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2022, @12:09AM
Far out, man! [imgflip.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2022, @08:43PM
was Madonna, up on stage French kissing a current young female TV star to try to stay relevant in popular culture.