Hubble breaks cosmic distance record: Sees universe soon after Big Bang

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have cranked the dial up to 10 to look further back in time and measure the distance to the most remote galaxy ever seen in the Universe , the Galaxy formed just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

“We’ve taken a major step back in time, beyond what we’d ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We managed to look back in time to measure the distance to a galaxy when the Universe was only three percent of its current age,” says Pascal Oesch of Yale University and lead author of the paper.

“The previous record-holder was seen in the middle of the epoch when starlight from primordial galaxies was beginning to heat and lift a fog of cold, hydrogen gas,” explains co-author Rychard Bouwens from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. “This transitional period is known as the reionisation era. GN-z11 is observed 150 million years earlier, near the very beginning of this transition in the evolution of the Universe.”

However, the discovery also raises many new questions as the existence of such a bright and large galaxy is not predicted by theory. “It’s amazing that a galaxy so massive existed only 200 million to 300 million years after the very first stars started to form. It takes really fast growth, producing stars at a huge rate, to have formed a galaxy that is a billion solar masses so soon,” explains Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
www.spacetelescope.org...

Half a billion years after the Big Bang , I wonder if it still exists or is it just a memory of the Universe , either way it's a thing to ponder and wonder at.

Cool.

Oh, why didn't I discover science when I was young?

They should should use the word alleged more or possible.

How can they be so sure they know what their looking at?

a reply to: onequestion

I'm not a scientist so only have a limited knowledge of red shift but that's how they worked it out.

Before astronomers determined the distance to GN-z11, the most distant measured galaxy, EGSY8p7, had a redshift of 8.68. Now, the team has confirmed GN-z11’s distance to be at a redshift of 11.1, which corresponds to 400 million years after the Big Bang

originally posted by: gortex
I'm not a scientist so only have a limited knowledge of red shift but that's how they worked it out.

One of these days they're going to find an object that is red shifted into a period before the Big Bang, and then they're going to have to revise their red shift theories to account for it. Perhaps revive that discarded notion of "old light" and include a parameter that addresses light as it drops in and out of virtual or multi-dimensional spacetime. Or something.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Yea I agree.

I cannot wait until they look 1 minute before the big gang and it is some old man with a white beard white robe and a halo. and then they seem him take a monster poop into the cosmic bowl which is actually the universe.

The big poop

a reply to: gortex

A couple weeks ago, a sizable asteroid exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Brazil.

NASA fessed up after the fact, just a few days ago, when forced to discuss. Before then....crickets...

Believe what they don't tell you. They lie like rugs.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: gortex
I'm not a scientist so only have a limited knowledge of red shift but that's how they worked it out.

One of these days they're going to find an object that is red shifted into a period before the Big Bang, and then they're going to have to revise their red shift theories to account for it. Perhaps revive that discarded notion of "old light" and include a parameter that addresses light as it drops in and out of virtual or multi-dimensional spacetime. Or something.

The reason they consider this the best guess is because they have billions upon billions of data points to correlate results. If they find something like you suggest once, it will be considered an statistical anomaly and thus be discounted. If they find enough evidence of something like you describe then they will adjust their math and approach a model that more closely represents reality.

originally posted by: onequestion
They should should use the word alleged more or possible.

How can they be so sure they know what their looking at?

Because of math and statistics. You should look up how they determine distance and size of celestial objects, its quite interesting.

They have it figured out, its peer reviewed ect.

a reply to: gortex

Honestly I'm still trying to figure out if there was one Big Bang or if there are infinite number of Big Bangs going on all the time.

a reply to: gortex

...the Galaxy formed just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

in this present age and time-space envelope (pocket)... it would take some 2 or 3 Billion years for a Galaxy to develop, create new matter which Stars can be born from...

but in the early universe.... there was a era/time-space pocket (envelope) where a Galaxy could come into being in a mere 100 Million years because the normal processes of Star formation (And ALL Physics) were clipping along at a hyper-Time the scientists call the 'period of inflation'...
where matter itself and the expanding Universe itself was growing at close-to-the-speed-of-light


so in our 'time' calibration we use the present day numbers to crunch as to velocities, expansions, et al... making the big bang just 14 Billion years ago (within our present 'correspondence' of Physics action/chemical reaction time durations to complete processes)


think of the 'inflation era' which accompanied the Big Bang event as a 500 billion years of time happening in the blink-of-an-eye,,, that 'wave' lasted for an indeterminate period of 'inflation era' time (lets say a million light years of big bang expansion) and then the energetic universe... s-l-o-w-e-d...w-a-y...d-o-w-n.... to this present, dense universe configuration


just what best describes my viewpoint... no credentials involved... but I am civil engineer, captivated by theoretical physics

originally posted by: Tarzan the apeman.
Honestly I'm still trying to figure out if there was one Big Bang or if there are infinite number of Big Bangs going on all the time.

I tend to think that the structure of spacetime is more like a constantly recycling torus, like this:

With everything pushing out and being sucked back in forever, including on a micro scale and in dimensions we're completely unable to observe. So the Big Bang is actually happening right now, all the time, and all the place.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Or all the time/space?

An intriguing concept. No egg, just the same damn chicken on a loop.

a reply to: gortex
Look back in time? How? Simulation? Sorry, just confused. Thanks for an explanation and I'll look to the comments if there's anything.

So if they can see this object, they should be able to 'reel in' the image, and basically watch the universe form. If this is what they say it is, anyway.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
An intriguing concept. No egg, just the same damn chicken on a loop.

Well, that's kind of what the Hubble is doing on a smaller scale. It looks as far as it can OUT into the universe, which is also BACK in time. If you were able to hop into a spaceship that was not limited by the speed of light (operating in a virtual spacetime bubble or dimension outside normal spacetime) and zoom in a straight line to the far edge of the universe, what you will find is that you've also "curved" back in time -- and distance -- to the very beginning of the universe and the singularity point. You could also get there by imploding along a magnetic or gravity dimension, since OUT and IN are basically the same thing distinguished by orientation.

The thing is, it's happening all the time. Inside and out. And the fun part is that it always puts ME (and you, I suppose) at the center of the universe. That's good for the old ego -- which exists in another kind of dimension.

originally posted by: Teikiatsu
So if they can see this object, they should be able to 'reel in' the image, and basically watch the universe form. If this is what they say it is, anyway.

I guess the problem with that is the inflation problem, as explained above. While they might be able to see something like that, in order for them to look even the 200 million years farther "back" into the sky, it would really be like trying to look back hundreds of billions of years in the accelerated time of the Big Bang. One second to us is the equivalent of a billion years at the beginning of time. Zeno's Paradox in action.

That's why the trick is to figure out a way to step back out of normal spacetime and into another "dimension" and get an external perspective on things. Imagination? Artificial intelligence? Ouch! It's too much for our little monkey brains to handle.

That is completely awesome.

Now only if they could crank it up to 11...

- AB

originally posted by: NewzNose
a reply to: gortex

A couple weeks ago, a sizable asteroid exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Brazil.

NASA fessed up after the fact, just a few days ago, when forced to discuss. Before then....crickets...

Believe what they don't tell you. They lie like rugs.

So, not talking about something = lying about it ?

Did you think that maybe nasa were collating data before releasing info? Tell me..what would they gain from lying about the meteor?

Here's a little challenge. Please provide credible absolute proof that nasa have lied about anything.

originally posted by: Annee
Cool.

Oh, why didn't I discover science when I was young?

Oh Annee --- Amen! Amen! Amen! (ironic pun intended)