New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope strongly suggest that infrared light detected in a prior study originated from clumps of the very first objects of the Universe. The recent data indicate this patchy light is splattered across the entire sky and comes from clusters of bright, monstrous objects more than 13 billion light-years away.
"We are pushing our telescopes to the limit and are tantalizingly close to getting a clear picture of the very first collections of objects," said Dr. Alexander Kashlinsky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., lead author on two reports to appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Whatever these objects are, they are intrinsically incredibly bright and very different from anything in existence today."
Astronomers believe the objects are either the first stars -- humongous stars more than 1,000 times the mass of our sun -- or voracious black holes that are consuming gas and spilling out tons of energy. If the objects are stars, then the observed clusters might be the first mini-galaxies containing a mass of less than about one million suns. The Milky Way galaxy holds the equivalent of approximately 100 billion suns and was probably created when mini-galaxies like these merged.
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2006-22/release.shtml
Popular Posts
-
... or, Decemberween. Whatever. http://www.homestarrunner.com/xmas04.html
-
"The fish was delish and it made quite a dish." http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail120.html
-
Very dry, dull book with some basic financial info like ROI and cash flow. Not a lot here.
-
After a year of hell, I've been given a reprieve. I've spent the last year dealing with contracts, negotiation, budgeting, and confl...
-
It's been almost exaclty three years since I've updated this blog. In that three years, I've achieved a lot -- I've gone aft...
-
Humanclock.com runs on a Radio Shack 2.4mhz TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer, using a stripped-down version of the Apache webserver softwa...
-
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wa...
-
Robots are being let loose in a colony of machines in an attempt to find out whether they can learn from their experiences. The scientists b...
-
I had the pleasure to attend the IBM Think conference in wet and chilly San Fran from Feb 11-14th of this year. The event overall was ...
-
Not a bad audio book, but I expected more. Big ideas: Build a high performance, high-trust culture; Identify desired results and un...
