Astronomers Spy Oldest Object In Universe

(CBS/AP)  Astronomers have spotted a burst of energy from a dying star, setting a record for the oldest and most distant object seen by Earth yet.

The 10-second blast was from when the universe was only 630 million years old.

NASA's Swift satellite spotted the gamma-ray burst, an explosion of high-powered radiation, on April 23.

Then ground telescopes watched the X-ray afterglow and calculated it had traveled 13.035 billion light-years to get here.

The event (dubbed GRB 090423) is the most distant cosmic explosion ever witnessed, beating old records by 100 or 200 million light-years.

"It was a true blast from the past," said Swift's lead scientist Neil Gehrels, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

NASA astrophysicist Neil Gehrels said the star's fiery death gave birth to a black hole.

The star was only 1 million years old or so and was about 30 times the size of our sun.

[redbarron73]

Sorry about offending you redBarron. I didn't think it was that bad of an idea! Posted by BerkelySkirtLifter.

No offense taken, as a matter of fact, I like the "eye yam." Hadn't seen that before.

From your earlier post, I mistook you for one of the "young earth" religious creationist nut jobs.

Sorry if I offended you :-)

[rf35]

Since you aren't intelligently designed, that makes you UN-INTELLIGENT.

Thanks for admitting it in your post.
Posted by Right_Wing_Extremist at 8:34 PM : Apr 29, 2009

By your logic, someone intelligent must have designed the one who designed us or that designer would be unintelligent. There would therefore have to be an infinite series of designers going back forever. I find the big bang easier to wrap my mind around that an eternal history of intelligent designers designing other intelligent beings.

[specialty8]

No, they just saw a picture of plastic Pelosi and it scared them.

[Right_Wing_Extremist]

Amazing how the intelligent design folks are a complete paradox to their theory of origins? Yeah for science .... evolution is alive and well! In 1000 years the dumb as dirt rednecks will be less dumb but unfortunatly still rednecks!
Posted by txlakeside

The only one who is dumb as dirt is you, because by DEFAULT you CAN't USE the word "Intelligent" nor can YOU be "Intelligent", because you don't believe you are intelligently designed.

Since you aren't intelligently designed, that makes you UN-INTELLIGENT.

Thanks for admitting it in your post.

[amer_icon]

Next question, how do they determine that the distance was only 13billion lightyears away and not 95billion lightyears away???


Anybody?

[amer_icon]

Hey kids !

Question:

"How did they measure the distance to this star? "

Answer:

Apparenlty, they base the distance on which wavelengths of the 'light' spectrum do and don't reach us after traveling so far.

"Beyond a certain distance, the expansion of the universe shifts all optical emission into longer infrared wavelengths. While a star's ultraviolet light could be similarly shifted into the visible region, ultraviolet-absorbing hydrogen gas grows thicker at earlier times. "If you look far enough away, you can't see visible light from any object. If you look far enough away, you can't see visible light from any object."

In this case no visible light appeared from this event. While longer-wavelength 'light' appeared the shortest wavelength of 1 micron was absent. This "drop out" corresponded to a distance of about 13 billion light-years.

[redbarron73]

BerkelySkirtLifter,denn034,sky_five,and bornin1952,

Repeat over and over until you get it...." I am sofa king we todd did"

[Hal9King]

To paraphrase Einstein: Its a search for something more infinite than human stupidity.
So far no luck.

[briannorwood]

alphaa10000:

My understanding of the big bang is that the universe did indeed begin as a single, infinitesimally small point.

So, my question was, if at some point in the past, everything was closer together, then the object we are observing was also closer than 13 billion light years away when the nova occurred 13 billion years ago. So then, why does it take the light from this object 13 billion years to travel to us?

[rf35]

briannorwood, good question. I honestly never thought of that. I'm no astronomer either, though. Can anyone answer this one?


P.S. Death to OPEC.