Astronomers Find Galaxy 13.1 Billion Years Old

Miami Heat small forward LeBron James shoots as Oklahoma City Thunder power forward Serge Ibaka (9) from Republic of Congo defends during the first half at Game 2 of the NBA finals basketball series, Thursday, June 14, 2012, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) / Jeff Roberson

Astronomers believe they have found the oldest thing they have ever seen in the universe: It is a galaxy far, far away from a time long, long ago.

Hidden in a Hubble Space Telescope photo released earlier this year is a small smudge of light that European astronomers now calculate is a galaxy from 13.1 billion years ago. That is a time when the universe was very young, just shy of 600 million years old. That would make it the earliest and most distant galaxy seen so far.

By now the galaxy is so ancient it probably doesn't exist in its earlier form and has already merged into bigger neighbors, said Matthew Lehnert of the Paris Observatory, lead author of the study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"We're looking at the universe when it was a 20th of its current age," said California Institute of Technology astronomy professor Richard Ellis, who wasn't part of the discovery team. "In human terms, we're looking at a 4-year-old boy in the life span of an adult."

While Ellis finds the basis for the study "pretty good," there have been other claims about the age of distant space objects that have not held up to scrutiny. And some experts have questions about this one. But even the skeptics praised the study as important and interesting.

The European astronomers calculated the age after 16 hours of observations from a telescope in Chile that looked at light signatures of cooling hydrogen gas.

Earlier this year, astronomers had made a general estimate of 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang for the most distant fuzzy points of light in the Hubble photograph, which was presented at an astronomy meeting back in January.

In the new study, researchers focused on a single galaxy in their analysis of hydrogen's light signature, further pinpointing the age. Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was the scientist behind the Hubble image, said it provides confirmation for the age using a different method, something he called amazing "for such faint objects."

The new galaxy does not have a name - just a series of letters and numbers. So Lehnert said he and colleagues have called it "the high red-shift blob. "Because it takes so long for the light to travel such a vast time and distance, astronomers are seeing what the galaxy looked like 13.1 billion years ago at a time when it was quite young - maybe even as young as 100 million years old - Lehnert said. It has very little of the carbon or metal that we see in more mature stars and is full of young, blue massive stars, he said.

What is most interesting to astronomers is that this finding fits with theories about when the first stars and galaxies were born. This galaxy would have formed not too soon after them.

"We're looking almost to the edge, almost within 100 million years of seeing the very first objects," Ellis said. "One hundred million years to a human seems an awful long time, but in astronomical time periods, that's nothing compared to the life of the stars."

[karek40]

I marvel at our refusal to change our mindset when data indicates otherwise. The speed of light is not a constant, it has been decreasing exponentially since the big bang. Initially it was about 10 to the 13 power faster than it is today.

[Scimajor]

Please enlighten me. What data shows the speed of light slowing down. Forgive me for being blunt but your conclusion is completely false.

[rwsmith29456]

Can we fathom what 'forever' really is? I think there had to be something here already or created in order to make a 'Big Bang' The 'kernel' of matter/energy/none of the above that 'banged' came from somewhere. "Big Crunches" MAY have been part of it but even that has a finite (albeit HUGE) time on it. Even many trillions of years are still finite. IS there really a beginning or end? What if we are one universe in a sea of universes that we can't observe because all of our observational tools are limited? I think we are on the verge of some monumental discoveries, but that they will just raise more questions. I've got to take my prozac!

[formrusmcsgt]

Astronomers Find Galaxy 13.1 Billion Years Old___________In a universe the Bible says is only 6,000 years old......shows how close to "the truth" that book is, eh?

[rennin1]

The Bible makes no claim concerning the age of the universe or the age of the Earth. It certainly does not say that the universe or that the Earth is 6000 years old. To see this for yourself visit scripture4all.org and go to Genesis 1:1-2 in the Hebrew Interlinear Bible. In Hebrew it literally says, "In-beginning he-created Elohim the-heavens and the-earth. And-the-earth she-became chaos and vacancy." Now, the word "became" meant the same thing back then as it does today. Take for example the statement, "I was a boy and I became a man." This statement means "I was a boy, then after an indeterminate amount of time, I was a man". Likewise, Genesis 1:1-2 tells us that the Earth was created, then after an indeterminate amount of time, the Earth was chaos. The creation account does not tell us what happened during this indeterminate amount of time or what events occurred before the creation story continued.
If the writer of Genesis had wanted to say in Hebrew that the Earth was created in a chaotic state, the Hebrew language of the time when Genesis was written would have allowed him to do so. See Genesis 4:26 for an example of how the Hebrew language supported usage of the word ?was? in sentence construction. The only reasonable explanation for why the writer of Genesis chose to use the word ?became? rather than ?was? in Genesis 1:2 is that he knew that there was an indeterminate time gap in the creation account and that he was omitting this time gap from the text.

[lucifersshadow]

The Big Bang is not an all-encompassing theory . . . taken by itself, it would be a ridiculus theory if it claimed to encompass everything . . . Gravity with no matter? . . . However, I have heard of nothing in the Big Bang Theory that says that there was no matter whatsoever outside of our own universe before the Big Bang. As I see it myself, the Big Bang was only a very small drop in a very large puddle. And I thing the universe has always, and will always exist . . But that is just my opinion, and I am no Physicist. However . . . For all the people who think the world is only 4,000 years old, I would suggest that you take out your bible, sit down, and research it. Follow the generations and the ages of death of all the people in the geneology from Adam and Eve to Jesus. It is all there. Do the addition until you come to a conclusive figure on how long it was between adam and eve and jesus, and then add the time from 1 AD to present, and see what you come up with. Then, get out a geology book and read it cover to cover. (I'm sure you are a strong enough christians to bear this). If you are to cheap to buy a new geology book, go to the goodwill store, they are pretty findable there, besides you will be donating to a good cause. What makes people weak-minded is when they are unwilling to check things out for themselves, and rely on what other people tell them. If you rely on what other people tell you instead of looking into it yourself, you are setting yourself up to be taken advantage of.

[kamsack50]

Since the Big Bang was the "beginning" of time and space, how is possible to say when it occurred? Or even where it occurred? Or even that it was an "explosion", since an explosion must have an an expanding point and blast outward ... into what?
I'm not saying there was no big bang many billions of years ago, but that the big bang is no replacement for God.

[jjoe57]

Can't resist skepticism about the "Big Bang" theory. So there was a big bang, creating a universe of stars and planets out of...what? Okay, then where did this "big bang" occur? The only presumptuous answer is that it occurred right here, where planet earth is. It can't be otherwise because earth's astronomers are looking outward from right here. What this tells me is what I've suspected for a long time--today's scientists have a cosmological attitude that predates Copernicus!

[mrspock2]

The Big Bang is no longer a theory. It has been proved to have occurred.
My own research document both defines and proves the grand unified field is not a theory but the precondition for all laws of nature as well.

[jjoe57]

Now reality may set a trap for scientists who theorize the universe was created 13.8 billion years ago. If this "oldest" galaxy is at the end of the universe, then we may now expect that astronomical gazes beyond that point will reveal NOTHING. But what if we spot an even farther away galaxy, maybe 15 billion light years away? So goes a theory?

[brian_norwood]

Where in the Bible does it say that the universe is 13.5 billion years old?

[rwsmith29456]

For that matter, where does it say the earth or the universe is 6000 years old? That number comes from a estimation given by the possible length of geneologies in the Bible.

[bigsk8fan]

just think of it. all of this good science can become history if republicans take control of our educational systems.

[verypublishedwriter]

You're entirely right. And this is a primary reason to get off our duffs and vote Democrat/Progressive on November 2. It's the only choice for people of mind and of heart.

[Lifeson2112]

You mean history like our Moon program that the Democrats just killed? I believe you've got your parties confused. Republicans love science. We just don't make ours up like you do, ie global warming. We prefer science with real uncontaminated data to back it up. In fact, lets stop all the Democrat's social programs and boost funding for the sciences. We could have a man on Mars in 10 years! But you morons would rather buy votes than further mankind through science.