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I have read something fascinating... First, here is a link. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101020/ap_on_sc/us_sci_oldest_galaxyThen, here is a picture. This is the oldest galaxy that they said to be found.
[image not available]
And last but not least, a part of the story copied. WASHINGTON – Astronomers believe they've found the oldest thing they've ever seen in the universe: It's 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's 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."When I read about the time when the universe was young, I got dizzy to imagine that there was the time when the universe didn't exisit at all. Then what does exist back then? What did it look like?... And there is something in the text that confused me. What does a "at a 20th of its current age" mean? And this - "we are looking at a 4-year-old boy in the life span of an adult"... What does that mean? Is it physics I don't understand or the language? Likely neither... 
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1/20 of 13 billion = about 600 million.
You have to keep in mind that the universe is believed to be an expanding set of massive objects called galaxies. So the further back in space one looks, the further back in time as well. The reason is that light, although it is the single fastest speed in the universe (according to current theory) when it comes to outer space, not even light travels fast enough to cover the distances in a short amount of time.
E.g. it takes light 8 minutes to travel from the sun to Earth. If the sun suddenly exploded then we wouldn't know about it for 8 minutes. So when we look at the sun with a solar telescope we are actually seeing those events which happened 8 minutes ago.
Apply this principle to the far reaches of the universe and when we see something 13 billion light years away, AND we believe that the universe is 14 billion years old, then what we are seeing is a very young galaxy - from the proverbial "beginning."
I hope this helped.
BTW, thanks for the story link. I will pass it along to my colleague.
Also, aside from this being an important event in astronomy, the goal of all this looking is to ... um, "see" the Big Bang. Astronomers believe that if they look far back enough, they will be looking passed creation, into utter blackness. They tried that with "Deep Field" and then again with the "Ultra Deep Field." Both times they saw even more galaxies than before. Something like this is so cutting edge that theories fly off to be published at light-speed only to be changed by new data - such as this image. Stay tuned and ... keep watching the skies.
(That's from an old 50's scifi movie :)
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SPARROW ASKED:
When I read about the time when the universe was young, I got dizzy to imagine that there was the time when the universe didn't exisit at all. Then what does exist back then? What did it look like?...
Sparrow, as I understand the big bang theory (See Edwin Hubble) , it was also the beginning of time. They theorise that there was nothing before the BB. We're not even talking a big open space with no stars. Not even that. And no passage of time for it to exist in and pass through. Whoa, Im dizzy.
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I'm stucked with "far, far away" and "long, long ago". Whenever I read these, I stop, imagine, and get stucked...oh my...
How long is a piece of string?
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Apparently they also found Newt Gingrich's high school yearbook there.
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That is if you believe in the accuracy of redshift - very dodgy!
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Interesting those galaxies, but when they actually reach one Black Hole they could bring back all my left foot socks (teleported by washer), gloves, umbrellas, reading glasses, pens and network printouts.
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-How do we know the universe is 13.*something* billion years old?
-If nothing is faster than light, so far, how can we see galaxies 20+ billion years away from us (when the universe is only 13 billion years old?
Could you make the explanation(s) layman's friendly? Thanks.
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AnthA1G wrote:
-If nothing is faster than light, so far, how can we see galaxies 20+ billion years away from us (when the universe is only 13 billion years old?
They have faster light because they still use miles and we use kilometres ;-)
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AnthA1G wrote:-How do we know the universe is 13.*something* billion years old?
-If nothing is faster than light, so far, how can we see galaxies 20+ billion years away from us (when the universe is only 13 billion years old?
Could you make the explanation(s) layman's friendly? Thanks. to address your second point a light year is a measure of distance rather than time..it's the distance an object traveling at the speed of light travels in one year. We can see them over a long period of time when the light emitting from it makes it to us. (think about this, some stars you see at night might not even exist anymore but the light they produced is still travelling towards us) also very good JJ! 
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bturpin wrote:to address your second point a light year is a measure of distance rather than time..it's the distance an object traveling at the speed of light travels in one year. We can see them over a long period of time when the light emitting from it makes it to us. (think about this, some stars you see at night might not even exist anymore but the light they produced is still travelling towards us) also very good JJ! Here is what's bothering me: A light year is the distance light can travel in one year. Got it. Then, how can we see galaxies 40+ billion light years away when the universe is only 13 billion years old? Doesn't light from very far away galaxies have to travel for 40+ billion years to reach us? Am I just missing the point completely?
And could you address my first question? 
Thanks!
EDIT: I just got it lol..
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the universe is expanding. when the light set out, it was a certain distance away, and has travelled to us. Meanwhile, the object has been getting further away. You know the speed it is going because of the redshift in the light (like the doppler effect where you can hear if a siren is coming towards you or going away)
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thar wrote:the universe is expanding. when the light set out, it was a certain distance away, and has travelled to us. Meanwhile, the object has been getting further away. You know the speed it is going because of the redshift in the light (like the doppler effect where you can hear if a siren is coming towards you or going away) I hadn't read this post before, thar. Thanks a lot! I was going to ask the question, again, in the new thread "Black hole question". I was incredibly perplexed but your explanation cleared it all up. It is, after all, because the universe is expanding!
PS: Thanks again for proving that I'm not a dummy.
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Anth
Puzzled by your Plato quote. Is this the same man who would tolerate slavery (nay forbid sexual congress between different classes of Athenian), abolish music and establish a philosopher driven tyranny? Somebody must have spiked his hemlock.
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Universal Rule:
The more chocolate I eat the more my butt expands....is this the doppler effect...or the Chocolate effect?
If the sun is 8 minutes away by the speed of light if I fall asleep and am late to turn over while sunbathing when I finally do will this become the red shift? or is that what my girlfriend wore to the beach over her bikini?
Oh no! In can hear a siren wailing in the distance..damn! You told me this was a nude beach!!
BTW JJ I have a bunch of left foot socks without corresponding right ones...can we do a deal? Oh yea I also have your network printouts but I am buggered if I know where your umbrella, pens and reading glasses are.....perhaps the "Borrowers"? or it has also occurred to me that the underpants gnomes may have diversified in attempt to stay economically viable since the GFC! .....just a thought...11
PEACE
" History doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme" Mark Twain
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Do deal, Alias! I fixed the problem.
I bought a second washer which eats only right foot socks and wash my left foot socks in it - and the right foot socks of course in the other ;-)
But if you could email me those printouts...?
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Can you get my soul back, the religion/s stole it off me. (How’s that for a black hole? - It looks just like a harmless book..."You can have eternal paradise, just give me your heart and your seeeoooueooeol, ps the devil is after your seoeeoul, watch your back") *classic mindfuck scenario* I know, I'll hope in Jesus <dumb, dumb> wrong answer. The answer you wanted is: I know, I'll just run for my life to somewhere safe, and figure out how to decipher fraud (using scientific method) Yay! This answer would have given you a full and happy existence. (Don't blame your intelligence; you were conditioned to be simple). Try again next time? (Don't say will Jesus give me a next time, instead, sing "I’ve got the power" and note the irony of it being based on gospel music- but hey, you're at a higher level now where religious psychosis doesn't bother you. And the view is spectacular.
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Fingerpori, 13.11.2010 (a daily comics strip in Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat) 1. We are now ready to publish the first pictures taken by our new satellite telescope... 2. ... In them you can see a piece of Universe after the Big Bang. - How soon after that? 3. About 13.7 billion years. [image not available]
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Opettaja, I am still in the first grade! Can you please translate these to English for me? Kiitos.  EDIT* Oops, I did not mean the text in the cartoon, i see they are already translated above. I referred to the text in that site.
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HS.fi English edition, ole hyvä!
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Olet ihmeellinen!
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Eipä kestä!
Lenam, we must stop chatting here or the officials move our Finnish small talk (jutustelu) into some black hole in cyber space ;-)
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pedro wrote:Anth
Puzzled by your Plato quote. Is this the same man who would tolerate slavery (nay forbid sexual congress between different classes of Athenian), abolish music and establish a philosopher driven tyranny? Somebody must have spiked his hemlock. Pedro, different times and culture, I guess. He was a good philosopher nevertheless.
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I visited the link you mentioned her and is really very interesting to see this pictures of old galaxies.I am very happy to see the oldest photo of the galaxy.
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