BDx13
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Nothin' trips my brain out more thant this kind of stuff...
Peek into deep space could rewrite history of Universe
Wed Mar 2, 1:37 PM ET
PARIS (AFP) - The discovery of a rich cluster of hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of galaxies in deep space suggests the Universe evolved into its
present form far sooner than was once thought, space agencies announced.
The sphere-like cluster of galaxies is "the most distant massive structure yet detected in the Universe," the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA
(news - web sites) declared.
The huge cluster is located some nine billion light years away, in the constellation Pisces Australis (the Southern Fish) -- about half a billion
light years farther out than the previous record holder for a formed galaxy, they said in separate press releases.
The Universe is calculated to be about 13.7 billion years old, born from a "Big Bang," the explosion which spewed out the hot matter that later formed
the galaxies and everything in them.
As the light from the newly-discovered cluster has taken nine billion years to reach us, its galaxies were already formed when the Universe was a mere
youth of five billion years old.
"We are quite surprised to see that exquisite structures like this could exist at such early epochs," said US astronomer Christopher Mullis of the
University of Michigan.
"We see an entire network of stars and galaxies in place at just a few billion years after the Big Bang, like a kingdom popping up fast."
"We have underestimated how quickly the early Universe matured into its present-day incarnation," said Piero Rosati, an astronomer at the European
Southern Observatory (ESO), headquartered in Garching, Germany. "The University has grown up fast."
Until now, the earliest evidence for the timetable of galactic development has come from "proto-clusters" -- galactic clusters in the making -- that
have been dated by analysis of their light to be up to 10 billion years old.
However, this yardstick gives no indication as to how long it takes for these wild, chaotic adolescents to mature into galaxies as we know them today.
In the cluster observed by Mullis' team, the galaxies are smoothly elliptical -- a sign that gravitational force and the outward expulsion of the Big
Bang gently sculpted them over what could be several billion years.
In addition, these galaxies are filled with stars emitting light in the red part of the spectrum, an unmistakeable sign of stellar old age.
Galaxy clusters contain hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound to each through the invisible tendrils of gravitational force. Our own
galaxy, the Milky Way, is a relatively "low-density" region of the Universe.
The newly-discovered cluster has been named XMMU J2235.3-2557, after ESA's orbiting telescope, the XMM-Newton.
The hi-tech observatory, launched in December 1999, detects radiation in the X-ray part of the energy spectrum that is invisible to optical
telescopes.
It was by trawling through archived material of XMM-Newton observations, made over the past four years, that the team spotted tantalising evidence of
a very distant galactic cluster.
They then turned the eyes of ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert onto the discovery, finding optical evidence to back the X-ray
emissions.
"This discovery might be just the tip of the iceberg," ESA and NASA said. "Other clusters undoubtedly lie hidden in the data archive waiting to be
discovered."
The research will be published in a fortchoming issue of a US publication, the Astrophysical Journal, the ESA press release said.
If I fail math, there goes my chance at a good job and a happy life full of hard work.
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BDx13
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OK, so a light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles. Let's call that 5.9 trillion miles. So that's pretty far right?
Well, these galaxies that were recently discovered are nine billion light years away.
What exactly is 5,865,696,000,000 x 9,000,000,000?
Fuck, that hurts.
If I fail math, there goes my chance at a good job and a happy life full of hard work.
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Killthehumans
Senior Member
Posts: 597
Registered: 12-1-2004
Member Is Offline
Mood: simon and garfunkal
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I used to want to be an astrophysicist , but like you it blew my mind....now im getting a degree in in lame ass geology
just take a look at the papers
your leaders
they\'re killers
they\'re liars
what they do in your
name to make the bodies pile higher
the murders, the terror
they\'ve done it forever
as we sit band and smile
at the script they sell us
but now the victims, they\'re rising
their numbers\'s multiplying
they want their revenge for the years
that they\'ve been dying
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GabeTexasGAMC
* GROWN *
Posts: 1828
Registered: 2-22-2004
Location: Texas
Member Is Offline
Mood: Teenage Fanclub
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jesus, i think i busted a brain vessle.
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jonnynewbreed
Posting Freak
Posts: 1091
Registered: 4-4-2003
Location: Dartmouth, nova scotia
Member Is Offline
Mood: Quite nice actually.
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52,791,264,000,000,000,000,000
I don't know what this nubmer is but it is the answer to you're mathmatical query. I did it in my head 
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Killthehumans
Senior Member
Posts: 597
Registered: 12-1-2004
Member Is Offline
Mood: simon and garfunkal
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BLows my mind is that before the big bang nothing existed. People think it was little cluster of matter that exploded, but it literally just came to
existance and boom!!!
just take a look at the papers
your leaders
they\'re killers
they\'re liars
what they do in your
name to make the bodies pile higher
the murders, the terror
they\'ve done it forever
as we sit band and smile
at the script they sell us
but now the victims, they\'re rising
their numbers\'s multiplying
they want their revenge for the years
that they\'ve been dying
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LilOz
Unregistered
Posts: N/A
Registered: N/A
Member Is Offline
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That is such an interesting field.
Isn't it true that universe is expanding and is practically infinite? Imagine what is out their boggles the mind, I know in our lifetime it won't be
achieved space travel wise, but when it does, it is going ot be amazing.
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BDx13
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HA! Johnny is totally right; google calculator told me so! So the new galaxies are 52.79 sextillion miles away.
Number of zeros : U.S. & scientific community naming convention
3 : thousand
6 : million
9 : billion
12 : trillion
15 : quadrillion
18 : quintillion
21 : sextillion
24 : septillion
27 : octillion
30 : nonillion
...it keeps going, but my brain is too jacked to think about it.
If I fail math, there goes my chance at a good job and a happy life full of hard work.
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BDx13
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Let's say you wanted drive your car to the new galaxies...
Assuming you did 60mph the whole way, it would take you 880 quintillion hours (879,854,400,000,000,000,000), or just over 100 quadrillion
years (100,373,396,000,000,000) to get there.
You know what? That shit is FUCKING FAR!
If I fail math, there goes my chance at a good job and a happy life full of hard work.
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SAAAAARS
Posting Freak
Posts: 1061
Registered: 7-29-2004
Location: maine
Member Is Offline
Mood: madball
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holy shit
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defstarsteve
Posting Freak
Posts: 3505
Registered: 11-19-2003
Member Is Offline
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I was on the fast track to studying nuclear physics as a wee lad...and I love astrophysics....
but alas a wrong turn here a bad haircut there and you make t-shirts for a living, staring at stars all night and try to create more efficient energy
sources thru electro-magnets...
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MyOwnWay
Posting Freak
Posts: 1786
Registered: 1-27-2005
Location: Pennsylvania
Member Is Offline
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Hmmm.... Big bang theory. Nope, still dont buy it....
If there was a "big bang" and thats how Earth was created, how did the shit get here. If you say God who made god? Now that shit messes with me.
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jonnynewbreed
Posting Freak
Posts: 1091
Registered: 4-4-2003
Location: Dartmouth, nova scotia
Member Is Offline
Mood: Quite nice actually.
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I think these numbers crossed my eyes.
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vinnie518
Junior Member
Posts: 42
Registered: 2-23-2005
Member Is Offline
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Interesting....
I read this one yesteerday and really got me thinking..
http://www.rednova.com/news/space/132303/finding_the_ultimat...
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moforn
Senior Member
Posts: 525
Registered: 7-13-2004
Location: Toronto
Member Is Offline
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I know my mind's boggled. I just started a book called "The Universe on a T-Shirt" by Dan Falk that explores the development of the understanding of
the universe. I'd recommend it to anyone finding this interesting. It's at chapters now for $6 HARDCOVER- for canucks anyway, I don't know about you
yanks. While the numbers they dealt with aren't quite as unfathomable as those listed above, It's unbelievable the degree to which 16/17th century
astronomers could chart the cosmos and map orbits based on comparisons of years upon years of observations. People would dedicate lifetimes to trying
to make sense of celestial movement and came up with remarkably accurate predictions about the makeup of the universe( I'm probably not really doing
the description justice so you'll just have to trust me and read the book). That's as far as I've gotten in the book but it does go into string theory
and the like later. Just thought I'd recommend the book as it's cheap and deals pretty directly with alot of this stuff.
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GOLD GRILL
*ASSHOLE*
Posts: 230
Registered: 2-23-2004
Location: houston
Member Is Offline
Mood: The Shins
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Word man, some good reading that brings Astrophysics down to an everday level: The Universe in a Nutshell by Hawking, Time; A Travelers Guide by
Pickover, and Superstring Theory by i forgot the fucking name. Good shit.
I just can\'t seem to STAND STILL
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Killthehumans
Senior Member
Posts: 597
Registered: 12-1-2004
Member Is Offline
Mood: simon and garfunkal
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wanna know somethin else crazy? if i somehow kept travelling across the universe....id come to where i started. The universe is curved, technically
you cant escape space.
just take a look at the papers
your leaders
they\'re killers
they\'re liars
what they do in your
name to make the bodies pile higher
the murders, the terror
they\'ve done it forever
as we sit band and smile
at the script they sell us
but now the victims, they\'re rising
their numbers\'s multiplying
they want their revenge for the years
that they\'ve been dying
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