Hubble sees farther back in time than ever before
Above: This image of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field is a small part of the deepest infrared image ever taken of the universe. The small blue box outlines the area where astronomers found what may be the most distant galaxy ever seen, 13.2 billion light-years away, meaning its light was emitted just 480 million years after the Big Bang. It is small and very faint and is shown separately in the larger box. The galaxy is shown as blue because it emitted very blue light due to its high rate of star birth, although by the time the light reached Hubble it had been stretched into the infrared by the expansion of space, giving it a redshift value of about 10. Its official name is UDFj-39546284, but astronomers refer to it as the “redshift 10 galaxy candidate.” Credit: NASA, ESA, Garth Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Rychard Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz and Leiden University) and the HUDF09 Team.
Pasadena, CA— Astronomers have pushed NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to it limits by finding what they believe to be the most distant object ever seen in the universe—at a distance of 13.2 billion light years, some 3% of the age of universe. This places the object roughly 150 million light years more distant than the previous record holder. The observations provide the best insights yet into the birth of the first stars and galaxies and the evolution of the universe. The research is published in the 27th January edition of Nature.
The dim object is a compact galaxy made of blue stars that existed only 480 million years after the Big Bang. It is tiny. Over one hundred such mini galaxies would be needed to make up our Milky Way.
Co-author Ivo Labbé of the Carnegie Observatories puts the findings into context: “We are thrilled to have discovered this galaxy, but we’re equally surprised to have found only one. This tells us that the universe was changing very rapidly in early times.”
Previous searches had found 47 galaxies at somewhat later times, when the universe was about 650 million years old. The rate of star birth therefore increased by about ten times in the interval from 480 million years to 650 million years. “This is an astonishing increase in such a short period, happening in just 1% of the age of the universe,” says Labbé.
“These observations provide us with our best insights yet into the earliest primeval objects yet to be found,” adds Rychard Bouwens of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
Astronomers don’t know exactly when the first stars appeared in the universe, but every step back in time takes them deeper into the early universe’s “formative years” when stars and galaxies were just beginning to emerge in the aftermath of the Big Bang.
“We’re moving into a regime where there are big changes afoot. And what it tells us is that if we go back another couple hundred million years toward the Big Bang we’ll see absolutely dramatic things happening. That will be the time where the first galaxies really are starting to get built up,” says Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz.
The even more distant proto galaxies will require the infrared vision of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the successor to Hubble, and next-generation ground-based telescopes, such as the Giant Magellan Telescope. These new facilities, planned for later this decade, will provide confirming spectroscopic measurements of the tremendous distance of the object being reported today.
After over a year of detailed analysis, the galaxy was positively identified in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field – Infrared (HUDF-IR) data taken in the late summer of both 2009 and 2010. These observations were made with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 3 (WFPC3) starting just a few months after it was installed into the Hubble Space Telescope in May of 2009, during the last NASA space shuttle servicing mission to Hubble.
The object appears as a faint dot of starlight in the Hubble exposures. It is too young and too small to have the familiar spiral shape that is characteristic of galaxies in the local universe, such as the Milky Way. Though individual stars can’t be resolved by Hubble, the evidence suggests that this is a compact galaxy of hot stars that first started to form over 100 to 200 million years earlier in a pocket of dark matter.
The proto galaxy is only visible at the farthest infrared wavelengths observable by Hubble. This means that the expansion of the universe has stretched its light farther that any other galaxy previously identified in the HUDF-IR, to the very limit of Hubble’s capabilities.
Astronomers plumb the depths of the universe by measuring how much the light from an object has been stretched by the expansion of space. This is called redshift value or “z.” Before Hubble was launched, astronomers could only see galaxies out to a z approximately 1, corresponding to 6 billion years after the Big Bang. The Hubble Deep Field taken in 1995 leapfrogged to z=4, or roughly 90 percent of the way back to the beginning of time. The new Advanced Camera and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field pushed back the limit to z~6 after the 2002 servicing mission. Hubble’s first infrared camera, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer reached out to z=7. The WFC3/IR reached back to z~8, and now plausibly has penetrated for the first time to z=10 (about 500 million years after the Big Bang). The Webb Space Telescope is expected to leapfrog to z~15, and possibly beyond. The very first stars may have formed between z of 30 to 15, or 100 to 250 million years post Big Bang.
The hypothesized hierarchical growth of galaxies—from stellar clumps to majestic spirals—didn’t become evident until the Hubble Space Telescope deep field exposures. The first 500 million years of the universe’s existence, from a z of 1000 to 10 is now the missing chapter in the hierarchical growth of galaxies. It’s not clear how the universe assembled structure out of a darkening, cooling fireball of the Big Bang. As with a developing embryo, astronomers know there must have been an early period of rapid changes that would set the initial conditions to make the universe of galaxies that exist today. Astronomers eagerly await the new space and ground-based telescopes to find out!
Re: 1DandyTroll says:
It has zero impact on me as to whether big bang theory is correct or not. The scientists behind it aren’t claiming I have to change my lifestyle or that my lifestyle is responsible for multiple deaths in the future. They don’t gain political power or extra funding by pushing big bang theory over other theories. As far as I am aware there is no evidence that the Universe has “Big Banged” (and “big Crunched”) multiple times in the past and that the scientists are proposing that this “Big Bang” is somehow different.
The “Word” – is the big bang. It is the totality of all frequencies.
“The small blue box outlines the area where astronomers found what may be the most distant galaxy ever seen, 13.2 billion light-years away, meaning its light was emitted just 480 million years after the Big Bang. ”
Only if there was a Big Bang (unproven/falsified) AND there is an expanding universe (unproven/falsified) AND redshift is evidence of expanding spacetime (unproven/falsified) AND extreme red shift is direct evidence of extreme distance (unproven/falsified) AND Hubble’s Law relating redshift to distance applies (unproven/falsified) AND etc etc
Sure, accept small doppler redshift of light due to proper motion as this is observable and testable, but I’m afraid most of cosmology these days is just a narrative that has got nothing to do with reality. It’s just another Ptolemaic system – it has some explanatory power, but utterly wrong. A thousand years ago we had belief in angels pushing the planets round. People today scoff at this because immaterial entities and unknown energies that were undetectable by instruments were invoked as explanations to phenomena that could not otherwise be understood. But now we have immaterial entities and unknown energies that are undetectable by instruments (dark matter and dark energy – now supposed to make up at least 96% of the universe) being invoked as explanations to phenomena that cannot otherwise be understood. It would be the refuge of the scoundrel to say that though we can’t directly detect dark matter and dark energy we can observe their effects on matter – the medieval savants said the same: you can see the effect on the planets going round – that’s the observable phenomena. I don’t think there is any more dark matter or dark energy than there is Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’: the underlying assumptions and models are wrong, so this gives rise to results that don’t add up. When you have to invoke so many dodgy things (as in astronomy and cosmology) to ‘save the phenomena’ or ‘save the theory’ it’s high time to realize that something is very wrong with the underlying assumptions and physics.
David says:
January 26, 2011 at 8:50 pm
In the criticism that you level: * tantamount to saying “everything inclusive”*
the semblence of time being infinite is that we could count backwards forever without stop, in the same way that we can count forward without stop. We could count to many trillions of billions of years into the past, and the future, since there could not have been a moment that did not precede another moment, or a moment that will not continue from another moment. Similarly with space, or the cosmos, which as far as we know is infinite in all directions, thus being without any measurable magnitude, without dimension and without a centre or a quantifiable origin or first cause.
This is indeed the problem of the contiguity between cause and effect, and the events that bind them together, which bear little reliable relation to one another.
As an analogy, if you see a stone shatter a window, what is the necessary connection between the two, and the contiguous binding events? Science doesn’t know, but infers metaphysical concepts, such as force, resistance, kinetic etc. With a fulcrum and lever we have force and resistance inferred from the operation of the one against the other, but when they cease to exert, and instead become *potential*, then these metaphysical abstractions cease to exist, potential being another useful metaphysical hypothesis
we can only know of the facts of the union between events but nothing of the necessary connection that bind the cause to the effect.
Jantar says:
January 27, 2011 at 2:28 am
Therefore, according to big bang theory, the sun must be 8 minutes old.
[Note: Site Policy states: “Certain topics are not welcome here and comments concerning them will be deleted. This includes topics on religion…” Fair warning to all. ~dbs, mod.]
I did not detect anything about religion in this thread but heaps and heaps of faith, either faith in science or faith in … (what term shall I use to not cause offence?) … you get my drift.
If faith is also to be banned then the whole AGW thing is off-limits and, in fact, it may be off-limits anyway as AGW has been given the status of “religion” in the UK.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6494213/Climate-change-belief-given-same-legal-status-as-religion.html
Maybe time to re-write the Site Policy?
[or maybe not]
[Reply: I’m making sure things don’t get out of hand. So far the discussion is fine. ~dbs]
George E. Smith says:
January 26, 2011 at 4:54 pm
i’d differ on that. your balloon is expanding into the area around it, your living room, or where ever you are
Time is an apple. Time is NO APPLE. Time is a worm in an apple. Time is a worm
NOT in an apple; and yet such definitions will be absolutely meaningless to most
people, for they can only think of time in terms of days or hours, and they do
not think of time as an experience itself, or quite simply, being.
Time is a construct of a consciousness that perceives it. It is not a reality separate from it.
The mind, or your consciousness, can only focus on one ‘belief’ at a time.
If you ‘believe’ you are seeing the ‘past’, your mind does indeed construct it for you so that it ‘seems’ that way. It constructs it for you in the form of the data that your eyes (or instruments) can then see. And for that ‘time’ you will only see that kind of ‘data’.
But if you get rid of that ‘belief’ in time…then you will see something completely different.
Mathematics is simply a numerical construct of what you wish to see, or believe you see. The numbers always work to some extent, because you create them to do so by the ‘assumptions’ chosen.
There is no such thing as unbiased mathematics, or even science for that matter.
That does not mean science and mathematics are not useful for practical everyday living, they are. But their basic reality as ‘artistic creations’ by ‘artists’ must be understood if one wishes to create a ‘fulfilling’ experience.
Cosmologists and Astronomers, in general, are much more willing to state that they don’t know something, or to accept challenges to accepted hypotheses, at least from the general, mostly non-technical books I’ve read. I think they realize just how absolutely staggeringly little we know about the universe and are constantly revising theories based on new evidence and the avilibility of new tools. There is good evidence of the Big Bang, the incredilbly rapidly expanding universe, and the finite universe (our universe as one of many). There are some really huge leaps of faith too, but they’ve made many in the past that have come true based on theoretical physics. They really don’t even try to speculate as to what happened before the Big Bang. And there a huge number of pardoxies as well, at least when considering our earth based laws of physics. (For instance there is pretty strong evidence the the speed of light was different in the deep past)
At any rate, Hubble and Swift have probably been the most effective “science projects” in history, they’ve made incredible contributions to the understanding of the universe. I remember when the first Deep Field photos came out from Hubble showing over 10,000 galaxies in a space of sky the size of a straw opening. And that was when it could only “see back” 6 billion years or so. Incomprehensible!
Every galaxy is moving away from every other galaxy. Like dots on the outside of a balloon being blown up.
—
jack morrow says:
January 26, 2011 at 4:05 pm
I find this hard to understand and yet I know it is probably true. If the universe started from a single point and expanded from there, how do you know that this galaxy is near the starting point and not as far on the other side of the beginning as we are on this side? Wheee!
Good to hear astronomers are still using telescopes instead of relying entirely on computer models of the early universe.
One wonders if such a young “galaxy” has a black-hole in the center. Or if a black-hole is necessary as a “seed” for the formation. Or if a black-hole forms later during a “quasar” period.
Lots of interesting questions.
As an engineer I accept the “rules” of science we have today. But I am limited by the First Law of Thermodynamics. If matter can neither be created nor destroyed then the BB voilates that. Even string theory with branes etc include the existence of something being created from nothing.
Besides if light is bent by the gravity fields of stars and black holes we don’t really know where that galaxy is. And it must be farther than stated if it followed a curved line to get here.
My balloon expands into the air in my house which existed before the balloon.
*****
Smokey says:
January 26, 2011 at 4:35 pm
Greene says the math explaining inflation conservatively shows that if the inflation immediately following the Big Bang caused the universe to expand to the size of the earth, then our 27 billion year [diameter] universe would be much smaller than a grain of sand. It’s a much bigger universe than what we can see.
*****
That’s something that also confused me at first. Can’t remember the website, but the guy seemed to know his stuff, and calculated that the universe at this point is at least 70 billion light-yrs in diameter & perhaps even much larger. The limit to what can be seen is not the “edge”, but just the sight-limit imposed by the finite light-speed.
For the first time in the 30,000 years of human development, we have created a society so rich that we can spend so much time and effort on things this abstract. The pyramids? Childs play, like sand castles!
I marvel at how far we have come, amazing!
In the middle of a brutal winter, we can sit in the comfort of our homes sipping coffee and instantly debate with people around the world. And we debate about the inflation of a balloon and the events of a zillion years ago. Reminiscent of the debate as to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!
Wealth and leisure unimaginable only one hundred years ago!
We are so rich and generous that for the first time (as Michelle O says) obesity is the number one health problem of the poor! It was not that long ago that periodic famine was the norm throughout the world.
Incredible.
However, we are headed for bankruptcy. With the current debt and the unfunded future liabilities, we will be lucky to feed ourselves, much less spend money on space craft.
Too bad.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
It’s very hard to discuss relativity, and the big bang with a language developed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is
You need mathematics to explain it not english
beng says:
January 27, 2011 at 7:19 am
Assuming we are at center of Universe and light has traveled 13.5 billion light years (BLY) to get year then the diameter of the visible universe is 27 BLY. As light is (assumed) to be omnidirectional then the universe should be 57 BLY minimum across in visible terms. But we have no idea if thats true.
I think one thing the staggering revelations in Cosmolgy has revealed is that interstellar travel is a fools errand and the likely hood of other intellignet life ever crossing paths with humans is zero. I love what I call the Star Trek Paradox, that sci-fi writers can imagine ships the size of cities travelling at speeds approaching the speed of light encountering dozens of species of humanoid life (also with this technology) but can’t predict a credit card sized smart phone with the exponentially more computing power than 1960s room sized computers. Not to mention the instantaneous communications from the Enterprise to Starfleet over several light-years distance. I guess having to wait 8 years for a response would make for a dull series. 🙂
Just think about Voyager. It is only just now approaching the edge of our solar system but think about how drastically our understanding of the universe has changed in the years since its launch!
The problem we have is that if we weren’t there, then we don’t know for sure. It’s the same problem with origin by creation, and the same problem with origin by evolution, same problem with carbon dating, same problem with big bang. You can create models of the universe which seem to fit observations quite well, but in the end, they are still nothing more than models. If you weren’t there, then you can’t prove it. To a certain point, you can trust recorded human history, which only goes back a few thousand years. Will we ever travel to another star? Doesn’t look likely in this lifetime. For at least another century, we are stuck where we’re at. And still just making guesses based on long distance observation with no concrete proof.
DocattheAutopsy wrote: “I’m going to love the day when the new space telescope finds a galaxy older than 15 billion years. That’ll make some heads spin.”
That won’t happen — at least not as simply as that. You can’t tell how old a galaxy is just by looking it. What astronomers do is relate an observed redshift value to an age based on a cosmological model. If the cosmological model says the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago, then no measured redshift value will be deemed equivalent to 15 billion years ago. On the other hand, if the new space telescope (i.e., JWST) finds galaxies with redshifts equivalent to, say, 13.5 or 13.6 billion years ago, so that those galaxies will have only 100 or 200 Myr since the Big Bang to evolve, then that will make heads spin and today’s preferred cosmological model will face a genuine crisis.
The great trouble with religion — any religion — is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason — but one cannot have both.
Sounds like a description of a lot of what passes for “science” today, too.
Lots of unscientific emotional statements here; folks not liking the BB because it feels wrong. Sadly another unconscious manifestation of liberal feels good rationalization from nominal conservatives.
The Big Bang is good science because it made predictions that are falsifiable and has so far passed test after test. The true scientific method in public observation.
Somewhat after the big bang theory (a derogatory moniker from Fred Hoyle who favored the steady state model) was proposed, radio astronomers unexpectedly found microwave radio ‘noise’ in all directions which was caused by the 3 degree Kelvin thermal radiation predicted by the big bang model. The BB also predicted the relative amounts of hydrogen and helium which percentages were much later measured throughout the observable universe. There are many other such observations, any of which could have falsified and therefore blown away (Heh!) the BB theory. It’s a model which has been ‘tweaked’ by later improvements such as Cosmic Inflation, etc. but has stood the brief 50 yr test of time.
Arp’s iconoclastic observations are old school and have not stood the test of time. The electromagnetic plasma guys are true fringe folks who have more emotion and personal investment than science in their closely held alternative view.
Another couple misconceptions I’ve read here include queries of what will better telescopes show. Remember when we look 13.x billion years in the past or ‘away’ we’re looking close to the max time/distance that light can travel in the interval. Better scopes can never see ‘further’, well not until until another few billion years pass. Unproven but rational is Dr Greene’s statement that the observable universe, limited by light speed observations, is most likely a tiny in every sense of the word, fraction of this universe.
Cosmology is alive and well as a science and has progressed greatly since it was closer to philosophy in the 1950s. Better instruments across all wavelengths have put measurement to the ideas and enabled those flawed postulates to be refuted by observation.
I was not referring to Eric’s true fun speculation about the JWST, which if it finds much younger galaxies will blow away the current, not well established, theories of how galaxies form. The current theories would then be falsified, if so.
Re: “It’s very hard to discuss relativity, and the big bang with a language developed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is
You need mathematics to explain it not english”
I would add to this poignant observation that the language of laboratory-tested physical mechanisms is also insufficient!
And I would also clarify that to point out the former without mentioning the latter suggests (perhaps unintentionally) that the rest of us “just aren’t getting it” because we’re not mathematicians. In online cosmological debates, that’s actually a common tactic for dismissing critics of conventional cosmology.
I think it’s fair to say that everybody has a right to disbelieve a universe which is only 4% baryonic. And perhaps, only a mathematician would claim that we should even cherish such a creation, or that we have no such right to challenge it …
… Not that this is what you were claiming, of course …
The so-called “big bang”:
A point source that had infinite density in an infinitely small volume.
Infinite can not be quantified. So, two terms are unquantifiable in the same explanation. It certainly isn’t a mathematically constrained physical theory.
So, what is it?
Dogma.
Astronomers admit what they don’t know?
Ever try challenging an astronomer about the “big bang”? You’ll find out just how dogmatic they are.