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
Monday, December 18, 2006
Popular Posts
-
The concept of dragons was probably brought to Japan around 2,000 years ago, along with the technology for paddy agriculture. Their images h...
-
...why was this given the file name of skyfall?... Certain information, while not specific as to target, gives the government reason to beli...
-
Someone that gets it. Service-oriented software, when done correctly in a platform-agnostic way can be flexible, cheap, and can motivate m...
-
Peruvian archeologists have discovered the first full Inca burial site at Machu Picchu since the famous mountaintop citadel was discovered 9...
-
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail94.html
-
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/marsexpress/377-260208-2149-6-co-01-HebesChasma_H1.jpg
-
From the bygone debates over DDR vs. RDRAM to the current controversy over Apples DDR implementations, one issue is commonly misunderstood i...
-
In my mind, this is a huge waste of effort. Put a base on Mars instead of the Moon -- there's huge science finds waiting there to be dis...
-
... or, Decemberween. Whatever. http://www.homestarrunner.com/xmas04.html
-
It looks like this might be real -- a Canadian company succesfully demoed a 16-qubit quantum computer which solved sudoku puzzles, seating...