"Steve Wright" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Oh thanks Sue that was really good to read, I've had a hell of a week and it
was really nice to read something that wasn't for my course work : )
Thanks Again
Steve OXOX
-----Original Message-----
From: Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, May 01, 1998 9:36 PM
Subject: L&I Steve: Stargazers Set Distance Record
>Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>
>Stargazers Set Distance Record
>
>> WASHINGTON (AP) -- Astronomers have detected a small
>> galaxy 12.3 billion light-years from Earth -- the most
>> distant object ever seen -- and say they are on the
>> brink of seeing things even farther away and closer to
>> the big bang beginning of the universe.
>>
>> ``We've already got some candidate objects that are
>> even farther away,'' said Esther M. Hu, a University of
>> Hawaii astronomer and co-discoverer of the most distant
>> object. ``We are looking about 94 percent of the
>> distance back to the big bang.''
>>
>> The discovery was first announced in Science News, a
>> weekly journal of research reports. The journal is to
>> publish the story on Saturday.
>>
>> The big-bang theory holds that the universe started
>> with a huge explosion and has been expanding ever
>> since. In the billions of years since, the hydrogen and
>> helium in the big bang have been processed through
>> stars to form other chemicals. Just when the big bang
>> happened is controversial, but most astronomers say it
>> was about 13 billion years ago.
>>
>> Just six weeks ago, another team of astronomers found a
>> small galaxy about 12.2 billion light-years away to
>> establish a most-distant mark. Both teams used the Keck
>> telescopes in Hawaii. A light-year is the distance
>> light travels in a vacuum in one year, about 5.8
>> trillion miles.
>>
>> ``The records for most distant galaxies have become
>> really fragile,'' said Bruce Margon, a University of
>> Washington astronomy professor. ``Once they would stand
>> for six or seven years. Now it changes in a matter of
>> months.''
>>
>> Margon said the latest discovery is important because
>> it continues to push back the time when it is known
>> that stars and galaxies formed after the big bang,
>> giving more understanding of the developmental history
>> of the universe.
>>
>> Hu and her colleagues, Lennox L. Cowie of Hawaii and
>> Richard G. McMahon of the University of Cambridge,
>> England, sighted the distant galaxy by analyzing a
>> particular wavelength of light emitted by hydrogen
>> atoms.
>>
>> This technique, said Hu, will enable the group to probe
>> even farther back in time and distance.
>>
>> One way astronomers measure distance and time is by a
>> value called the redshift. This is the amount that a
>> wavelength of light has been stretched, or shifted, by
>> the expanding universe. The new most-distant galaxy
>> found by the Hu team is at a redshift of 5.64. This is
>> about 60 million years earlier than the previous mark,
>> which was a redshift of 5.34.
>>
>> ``We already have candidates at redshift 6.5 and I
>> think we'll eventually push it back to a redshift of
>> 7,'' said Hu. This would push the viewed universe back
>> to within 4.4 percent, or about 500 million years, of
>> the big bang, she said.
>>
>> Galaxies at that distance, said Hu, will all be young,
>> only a few tens of millions of years old, since the
>> universe at that point is also very young.
>>
>> Margon said there is a physical limit on just how far
>> back toward the big bang astronomers will see. For
>> about the first million years after the big bang, when
>> the universe was just beginning to expand, the matter
>> was still so dense that if there was light it could not
>> travel very far before being absorbed.
>>
>> Additionally, it is believed that it took several
>> million years for stars to form, and without stars,
>> said Margon, there was no light to be seen. One
>> question to be solved, he said, by looking for fainter
>> and fainter starlight is to discover how soon after the
>> big bang galaxies began to form.
>
>--
>Two rules in life:
>
>1. Don't tell people everything you know.
>2.
>
>
>
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