September 13, 2005
AND THERE WAS LIGHT:
Exploding Star Is Said to Be Oldest Ever Observed: A massive energy burst recorded by NASA's Swift satellite signals the first stellar evidence from the very early years of the universe. (John Johnson Jr., September 13, 2005, LA Times)
In the equivalent of spotting a bonfire at the dawn of time, NASA's orbiting Swift satellite has detected the most-distant exploding star — a cosmic suicide that took place just 500 million years or so after the creation of the universe, scientists say.Posted by Orrin Judd at September 13, 2005 12:00 AMLocated 12.6 billion light years from Earth, the explosion shows that giant stars formed earlier than previously thought.
"This is the first direct evidence of very early stars," said Neil Gehrels of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "It tells us when the dark ages of the early universe were coming to an end."
In cosmic terms, the "dark ages" were a time when the universe went black a few hundred million years after the Big Bang flooded the universe with light and matter. The dark ages lasted a few hundred million more years until stars began to form, relighting the universe.
What I don't get is this: If this light we're seeing is 12.6 billion years old, and is from a source 12.6 billion years away..how did our solar system get that far away from the source?
If we've been travelling at half the speed of light away from that source, then wouldn't we have to have started moving away from that source 25.2 billion years ago? In which case the light isn't from the dawn of time, it is from 12.6 billion years after the dawn of time. If we're only moving at one quarter the speed of light, we would have to have started moving away from that source 50.4 billion years ago...etc. This stuff doesn't make sense from a time/distance perspective.
According to the article, the light originated 0.5 billion years after the big bang...so our solar system has travelled 12.6 billion light years in 13.1 billion years? Isn't that moving pretty d*mn quick across the universe? 96% of the speed of light. Seems hard to believe. And if we started out moving fast and have been slowing down, doesn't the average speed still have to work out to 96% of the speed of light, meaning we started out moving even faster...but wait, I thought that wasn't possible...
Unless God created a big universe all spread out across space, rather than starting from a single point...
Posted by: Keith R at September 13, 2005 7:25 PMKeith R.
you just have to read Orrin's highly recommended "Coming of Age in the Milky Way"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385263260/qid=1126671218/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-1612741-5663200?v=glance&s=books
All will be explained!!!!
oj, speaking of above book, just love this para:
"It may be, then,that the universe is comprehensible because it is defective - that because it forsook the perfecttion of nonbeing for the welter of being, it is possible for us to exist, and to perceive the jumbled, blemished reality, and to test it against the ghostly specter of the primordial symmetry thought to have preceded it. We are, therefore we think. (Or, as the fabulist Jorge Luis Borges put it, "in spite of oneself, one thinks.")
Fall of Man???
Mike
OK...I'll look at that book sometime soon...Still doesn't make sense how 13.1 billion years is long enough for two stars to get 12.6 billion light years apart...
Posted by: at September 14, 2005 5:23 AMMike:
Yes, interesting that the most rigidly rationalist/scientific object to God because the world is flawed and Man with it, yet the flaw may be the point.
Posted by: oj at September 14, 2005 7:37 AM