'Oldest galaxy' discovered using Hawaii telescope

[Judi Lynn]

'Oldest galaxy' discovered using Hawaii telescope

Japanese astronomers on Hawaii say they have found a galaxy formed 12.91bn light years ago

Associated Press in Honolulu
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 June 2012 03.38 EDT



A team of Japanese astronomers using telescopes on Hawaii say they have seen the oldest galaxy yet discovered.

The team calculates that the galaxy was formed 12.91bn light years ago, and their research will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. The scientists with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan used the Subaru and Keck telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea.

A light year is the distance that light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (9.66 trillion kilometres). Seeing distant galaxies is in effect looking back in time.

Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology, an influential expert in cosmology and galaxy formation, said the latest work was more convincing than some other claims of early galaxies.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/12/oldest-galaxy-found-hawaii-telescope

[Bolo Boffin]

1. I'm going to have to see the long-form. n/t

[Silent3]

2. That's "12.91bn light years AWAY", not AGO.

Last edited Tue Jun 12, 2012, 01:33 PM - Edit history (1)

Light years are a unit of distance, not time.

Edit: I see now that the article has a correction at the bottom, stating that the original article did indeed say "ago", but that it was corrected online later.

[sakabatou]

4. A light year is also a measure of time.

The Sun is about 8 light-minutes away, therefore, we are seeing 8 minutes into the past when we look at the Sun from the Earth. The star Proxima Centauri is about 4.2 light years away. The light we see is 4.2 years into the star's past.

[Silent3]

5. Light years relate fairly directly to time...

...in some contexts, but they are still units of length, not of time.

For example, it makes no sense to say, "I went to college for four light years".

[sakabatou]

6. Yes, it's still a mesure of length.

[laconicsax]

7. We substitute time for distance all the time depending on the context.

"15 minutes" is a perfectly valid answer to the question "How far away is the planetarium?"

[Silent3]

8. Yes, but you still know someone screwed up when they say...

"light years ago" or that their ship is so fast that it "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs".

[laconicsax]

9. Ah, but even then, the rationalizations have been made:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run

In the revised fourth draft of A New Hope in 1976, the description for "Kessel Run" is put as follows:

It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs! Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.

So it implies that the puzzling speech of Han Solo is "misinformation" and not truth, and it has nothing to do with the nature of the Kessel Run in any respect. Han means nothing other than impressing Obi-Wan and Luke with pure boasting. Indeed, even in the final version of the script, the parentheses attached to Han's line state that he is "obviously lying."

In the commentary for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope DVD, George Lucas mentions that the parsecs are due to the Millennium Falcon's advanced navigational computer rather than its engines, so the navicomputer would calculate much faster routes than other ships could.

[sakabatou]

3. Wow... galaxies formed pretty early after the Big Bang

Only 1.69 billion years after the Big Bang.