Galaxy discovered 10.2 billion light years from Earth

[EMF]

This young galaxy cluster was "spotted" ( in 2006 ) some 1 billion light years further out than any previous record. It is so far out there, that scientists do not expect to find any more. They say that this cluster was formed when the universe was only 25% of its present age and according to current theories, gravity could not pull together such structures much earlier as there simply would not have been enough time to do it.

But, they are looking! If they do find too many more structures or even ones younger, they say that we may have to do some re-thinking of our existence and how we came about.

I never heard about this problem before and found it fascinating. Even I can understand it! To me this kind of research /exploration is very cool. I am just astonished, that something like this can be found and verified to exist.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6395761/Space-most-distant-galaxy-cluster-discovered.html

Galaxy clusters are the universe's largest collections of items held together by gravity, and scientists hope the discovery of one at such an early stage will help them discover more about how the universe evolved.

The discovery is on the cusp of when scientists think galaxy clusters can exist based on how long it would take them to assemble, said Dr Ben Maughan, lecturer in astrophysics at the University of Bristol.

"It is certainly the earliest example by a long way and it is pushing the limit of when we expect to see them. We do not expect to find many older than this, but you can never say never.

"Our models tell us that in the period of the universe we are looking at, the number of galaxy clusters we should be able to find is about one. ( me )

"If we were to find several tens of galaxy clusters at that distance that would be a matter of concern because in our current models the universe can not produce masses of galaxy clusters at such an early point."

Stefano Andreon, of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Milan, added: "This object is close to the distance limit expected for a galaxy cluster. We don't think gravity can work fast enough to make galaxy clusters much earlier."

I wonder if the models are correct or if there will one day be cause for "concern"?

 

[Takemehome]

Science used to think the atom was the smallest part you could get.
Then with time and more powerful microscopes and accelerators,
It found more and more particules.
Microscopes and telescopes are our eyes. They have their limits.
I really think infinity is both ways: infinite small and infinite big.
And if I'm right, our universe is like an atom in a much bigger Universe,
composed of many universe like ours and so on.

Could it be that this far away galaxy is a far away galaxy from an older neighbor universe ?
Is it getting closer or away from us ?
If we are the only universe ( only one big bang ), why are there galaxies in collision courses ?

So many questions.
And each time we find an answer, more questions are raised.

 

[amberwolf]

I'm not sure how old a galaxy you can actually see in any of the images, but if you want to help science along you can go to http://GalaxyZoo.org and look at lots and lots of very pretty and interesting pictures while doing useful work.

I don't go anymore because I found I would be there for 5 or 6 hours and not even realize it, until the dogs all start trying to drag me away so they can eat.

 

[AussieJester]

I think it would be very naive to think there isn't more out there, i also think there is
other intelligent life forms we haven't and may never come across. Just because we can't get that far or see that far etc doesn't mean
they don't exist does it? Wasn't that long ago man thought the world was flat ;-S

KiM

 

[amberwolf]

Just remember that the farther away you look out in the universe, the farther back in time you are seeing.

 

[Takemehome]

Just remember that the farther away you look out in the universe, the farther back in time you are seeing.

We know that light is a form of energy.
Since astronomers can not see beyond 15 billion light years,
I wonder if a beam of light ( photons ) can last more than 15 billion years ?
It could explain our "blindness" past this point.

 

[1of3]

Ok then, getting their.... ping or ?.... also, more perplexing.... 7of9, T'Pal, or Carter...?

 

[Drunkskunk]

This stuff fasinates me.

Time and space came into exsistance with the big bang. Nothing exsisted before it or beyond it in our definition of exsistance. That means that the universe is not infinite. Since it's an estimated 13.7 billion years old, its 27.4 billion lightyears wide. that means Exsistance would have a volume of 10,770,858,260,000,000 cubic light years.
A Cubic Light year is 2.03141908 × 10^38th cubic miles
That means All of exsistance is 2.1880127 × 10^54th Cubic miles.
Or, if you want a name for it, 2.18 septendecillion Cubic Miles

 

[Russell]

How can that be when the world as we know it is only 6,000 years old?

I worked with an otherwise very intelligent guy who believed just that...

-R

 

[EMF]

This stuff fasinates me.

Time and space came into exsistance with the big bang. Nothing exsisted before it or beyond it in our definition of exsistance. That means that the universe is not infinite. Since it's an estimated 13.7 billion years old, its 27.4 billion lightyears wide. that means Exsistance would have a volume of 10,770,858,260,000,000 cubic light years.
A Cubic Light year is 2.03141908 × 10^38th cubic miles
That means All of exsistance is 2.1880127 × 10^54th Cubic miles.
Or, if you want a name for it, 2.18 septendecillion Cubic Miles

Yeah me too. I'm reading a Clive Cussler novel at the moment called "Polar Shift". In there I read something that caught me by surprise. They said that of course matter is subject to the rules of time and space. However, energy is not! WTF? Is this true? Any learned scientists out here?

 

[swbluto]

This stuff fasinates me.

Time and space came into exsistance with the big bang. Nothing exsisted before it or beyond it in our definition of exsistance. That means that the universe is not infinite. Since it's an estimated 13.7 billion years old, its 27.4 billion lightyears wide. that means Exsistance would have a volume of 10,770,858,260,000,000 cubic light years.
A Cubic Light year is 2.03141908 × 10^38th cubic miles
That means All of exsistance is 2.1880127 × 10^54th Cubic miles.
Or, if you want a name for it, 2.18 septendecillion Cubic Miles

Yeah me too. I'm reading a Clive Cussler novel at the moment called "Polar Shift". In there I read something that caught me by surprise. They said that of course matter is subject to the rules of time and space. However, energy is not! WTF? Is this true? Any learned scientists out here?

The speed of light is universal, so it'd actually be less than or equal to 13.7 billion lightyears.

When I mean universal, I mean the largest possible difference in velocities between two objects is the speed of light. This may not be that weird, but consider this. If a person throws a base-ball at the speed of light in one direction and then throws another baseball at the speed of light in the opposite direction, the person may see both traveling at the speed of light but the speed of the other baseball from the viewpoint of a given baseball is also the speed of light. That's one of the mind-blowing concepts of relativity. The necessary component to explain this seeming discrepancy is that the rate of time actually changes depending on your relative speed to another object.

 

[EMF]

When I mean universal, I mean the largest possible difference in velocities between two objects is the speed of light. This may not be that weird, but consider this. If a person throws a base-ball at the speed of light in one direction and then throws another baseball at the speed of light in the opposite direction, the person may see both traveling at the speed of light but the speed of the other baseball from the viewpoint of a given baseball is also the speed of light. That's one of the mind-blowing concepts of relativity. The necessary component to explain this seeming discrepancy is that the rate of time actually changes depending on your relative speed to another object.

LOL this reminds me of something I thought about a bit.

For the sake of argument. IF you had a spaceship and IF you had the energy required to accelerate it to the speed of light, ( I guess this is impossible as the mass would become so great that an infinite amount of energy would be required ) then time would stop inside the spaceship right? So...when you got "close" to reaching your destination...would you be able to issue the command to decelerate?

 

[swbluto]

When I mean universal, I mean the largest possible difference in velocities between two objects is the speed of light. This may not be that weird, but consider this. If a person throws a base-ball at the speed of light in one direction and then throws another baseball at the speed of light in the opposite direction, the person may see both traveling at the speed of light but the speed of the other baseball from the viewpoint of a given baseball is also the speed of light. That's one of the mind-blowing concepts of relativity. The necessary component to explain this seeming discrepancy is that the rate of time actually changes depending on your relative speed to another object.

LOL this reminds me of something I thought about a bit.

For the sake of argument. IF you had a spaceship and IF you had the energy required to accelerate it to the speed of light, ( I guess this is impossible as the mass would become so great that an infinite amount of energy would be required ) then time would stop inside the spaceship right? So...when you got "close" to reaching your destination...would you be able to issue the command to decelerate?

Yeah, it's true that theory says that it's actually less than the speed of light. But, supposing you got very very close, you would still experience time as if it hadn't really changed, but since the outside world is operating at a much faster pace, you would have to issue the command very far into advance! If you were going exactly the speed of light, then it would seem impossible.

 

[EMF]

When I mean universal, I mean the largest possible difference in velocities between two objects is the speed of light. This may not be that weird, but consider this. If a person throws a base-ball at the speed of light in one direction and then throws another baseball at the speed of light in the opposite direction, the person may see both traveling at the speed of light but the speed of the other baseball from the viewpoint of a given baseball is also the speed of light. That's one of the mind-blowing concepts of relativity. The necessary component to explain this seeming discrepancy is that the rate of time actually changes depending on your relative speed to another object.

LOL this reminds me of something I thought about a bit.

For the sake of argument. IF you had a spaceship and IF you had the energy required to accelerate it to the speed of light, ( I guess this is impossible as the mass would become so great that an infinite amount of energy would be required ) then time would stop inside the spaceship right? So...when you got "close" to reaching your destination...would you be able to issue the command to decelerate?

Yeah, it's true that theory says that it's actually less than the speed of light. But, supposing you got very very close, you would still experience time as if it hadn't really changed, but since the outside world is operating at a much faster pace, you would have to issue the command very far into advance! If you were going exactly the speed of light, then it would seem impossible.

Thanks! I wondered about that. Very cool. Just think, if you could travel the speed of light- you would become immortal!

 

[Takemehome]

Here is an interesting question:

You leave earth at light speed, if you can still see the earth,
the image of the earth is traveling faster than light speed to reach you.
According to Einstein, nothing can go faster than light.
Therefore, if you travel at the speed of light, everything behind you vanishes ?

 

[amberwolf]

Here is an interesting question:

You leave earth at light speed, if you can still see the earth,
the image of the earth is traveling faster than light speed to reach you.
According to Einstein, nothing can go faster than light.
Therefore, if you travel at the speed of light, everything behind you vanishes ?

It is postulated that the Doppler effect at near-luminal velocities will create a "starbow", with nothing visible in the center of the path either forward or rearward, and any EM-energy emitting objects left visible in a ring around the middle that shades from near-UV down to lowest reds, for visible light, and above and below that for the non-visible stuff.

The width of the ring narrows as the velocity gets closer to lightspeed, as it is less likely that photons will be crossing your path in an intersection course in a way that you could still intercept and "see".

At the point just below lightspeed, photons coming from the front at any angle will be at such a high energy level (relative to you) that they will be beyond the highest energy detection we can do (by current technology), and that coming from the rear will be at such a low energy level (relative to you) that they will be below the threshold for capture by our systems, being at or below the noise level of the systems.

You cannot test the theory of what would happen *at* lightspeed, because it would theoretically take infinite energy to reach that speed. Probably, you could not even come truly close; perhaps 99.99% or something like that, maybe less, because the universe would end before you could get any faster, with accelerations possible to us now (even assuming a renewable fuel source using something like a Bussard collector feeding a fusion engine--there are large inter-galactic voids out there containing so few atoms that you would be coasting thru them with virtually no acceleration for very long periods).

 

[EMF]

"near-luminal velocities" That's a new one...I like that!