WASHINGTON—U.S. and European researchers trying to peer back to the beginnings of the universe said Wednesday they have spotted what they think is the most ancient galaxy ever seen -- 13.2 billion years old.
The aging Hubble Space Telescope collected light from the dim object, which would have formed when the universe was just 480 million years old, the researchers report in the journal Nature.
“We’re peering into an era where big changes are afoot,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz, one of the researchers working on the study.
“The rapid rate at which the star birth is changing tells us if we go a little further back in time we’re going to see even more dramatic changes, closer to when the first galaxies were just starting to form.”
Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles a second, or about 6 trillion miles a year. Astronomers can use light-speed as a kind of time machine, and seeing light emitted from objects very far away shows them as they were in the past.
In this case, the galaxy’s light started traveling 13.2 billion years ago, right after the Big Bang that created the universe.
http://www.thestar.com/news/science...-telescope-spots-oldest-galaxy-ever-seen?bn=1
The aging Hubble Space Telescope collected light from the dim object, which would have formed when the universe was just 480 million years old, the researchers report in the journal Nature.
“We’re peering into an era where big changes are afoot,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz, one of the researchers working on the study.
“The rapid rate at which the star birth is changing tells us if we go a little further back in time we’re going to see even more dramatic changes, closer to when the first galaxies were just starting to form.”
Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles a second, or about 6 trillion miles a year. Astronomers can use light-speed as a kind of time machine, and seeing light emitted from objects very far away shows them as they were in the past.
In this case, the galaxy’s light started traveling 13.2 billion years ago, right after the Big Bang that created the universe.
http://www.thestar.com/news/science...-telescope-spots-oldest-galaxy-ever-seen?bn=1