Scientists see blast from past -- 13 billion years ago

[MelT]

Posted 2009/10/29 at 1:20 am EDT

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2009 (Reuters) — Astronomers have seen the furthest back in time ever, measuring light from a star that exploded 13 billion years ago, just after the dawn of the universe.

File image shows a time exposure of the night sky above the Swiss mountain resort of Grindelwald January 10, 2008. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth


They traced a gamma-ray burst called GRB 090423 to see the light from the massive star that died 630 million years after the Big Bang that brought the universe into being, they reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday.



Two separate teams measured the redshift of the object at about 8.2. Redshift is the distortion of light as it travels across space and time and is often likened to the sound of a train rising and falling as it approaches and passes the listener.

This extreme redshift -- the highest ever recorded -- shows the burst occurred when the universe was less than 5 percent of its current age, Nial Tanvir of Britain's University of Leicester and colleagues reported.

"The redshift measured for GRB 090423 means that the burst occurred at a time when the universe was about nine times smaller than it is today -- putting the timing of the event at about 630 million years after the Big Bang," Bing Zhang of the University of Nevada wrote in a commentary.

"Gamma ray bursts are the most violent explosions in the universe," he added.
"They are believed to be associated with the formation of stellar-sized black holes or rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron stars during cataclysmic events such as the collapse of a massive star or the coalescence of two compact stellar objects."

In this case, the star's death long ago was bright enough to outshine even galaxies and will help scientists understand what happened in the early days of the universe.

[k.smith904]

I remember when that star blew up, shit was crazy.

Thanks for posting MelT

[tripleoptic]

Very cool article.

[ibjamming]

No No No! You're NOT seeing light from 13 billion years ago AND from the early universe! The light may be 13 billion years old, but it's most definitely NOT from the early universe.

IF the universe originated in a big bang from a POINT...then why can OLD things be seen from all directions. There should be a "source point" that should be able to be calculated. THE direction that everything can be traced back to. There isn't.

How the hell do you see NOW light that was emitted 13 billion years ago by something existing in a universe many billionths the size of what it is now? It's like seeing light that was emitted from the surface of an expanding balloon when the balloon was still small...and seeing it now that the balloon is blown up.


The only thing that would allow this...is a universe that is expanding MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than the speed of light. Like it was instantaneously the size it is now. And besides some WICKED bending...how does the billions of years OLD stuff appear to be all around us?

I think it's all a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

[dumped43]

Originally Posted by ibjamming

I think it's all a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

yea ur right i herd there was this guy jesus and his dad started it all about 2,000 years ago

[greenmeany]

jesus thats almost as old as the universe itself! current theories are 13.5-14 billion years old.

[Tyro01]

Originally Posted by ibjamming

No No No! You're NOT seeing light from 13 billion years ago AND from the early universe! The light may be 13 billion years old, but it's most definitely NOT from the early universe.

IF the universe originated in a big bang from a POINT...then why can OLD things be seen from all directions. There should be a "source point" that should be able to be calculated. THE direction that everything can be traced back to. There isn't.

How the hell do you see NOW light that was emitted 13 billion years ago by something existing in a universe many billionths the size of what it is now? It's like seeing light that was emitted from the surface of an expanding balloon when the balloon was still small...and seeing it now that the balloon is blown up.


The only thing that would allow this...is a universe that is expanding MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than the speed of light. Like it was instantaneously the size it is now. And besides some WICKED bending...how does the billions of years OLD stuff appear to be all around us?

I think it's all a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

Wut. If the universe was expanding faster than the speed of light, than your eyes would be pointless. No light would ever reach your eyes because it would constantly be being pulled away by the expanding universe. The redshift itself mentioned in this article proves that the universe isn't expanding faster than the speed of light. It expands enough to stretch the waves and create a redshift but not faster than the light waves themselves.

[ibjamming]

Originally Posted by Tyro01

Wut. If the universe was expanding faster than the speed of light, than your eyes would be pointless. No light would ever reach your eyes because it would constantly be being pulled away by the expanding universe. The redshift itself mentioned in this article proves that the universe isn't expanding faster than the speed of light. It expands enough to stretch the waves and create a redshift but not faster than the light waves themselves.

OK then...please explain to me how I can see light NOW that came from a young much smaller universe 13 billion years ago. When that light was emitted, this part of the universe wasn't even here yet. So how am I seeing it now? It should have passed me LONG ago...long before we were even here. Long before the earth had even formed, the sun had formed.

The ONLY way this could possibly happen...us seeing light from the early universe...is for the "outer boundary" of the universe to act like a shock wave which moves much faster than light and created matter, stars, galaxies, as it moved out and away from the big bang. Light is lagging behind...a LOT behind. That's the ONLY possible way to see light from the beginning now.

So...you're going to base EVERYTHING on a red shift? How about if the red shift is REALLY caused by light being slowed, albeit very little, by whatever medium it travels through. I think light travels through a very small "aether" which has an almost imperceptible effect on it. Over distances of billions of light years, it adds up...for ANY experiment we could do here on earth, there is NO measurable effect. Think of it like sound waves slowly dissipating, waves on water slowly dissipating. Maybe over enough distance, light eventually slows to a stop too. I mean really...a photon, something formed when an electron moves to a lower state...has the energy to go forever? I don't think so.

The questions are bigger than you can imagine...we are like children, naive and ignorant.

And no..."God" didn't do it.

[K-9]

Originally Posted by dumped43

yea ur right i herd there was this guy jesus and his dad started it all about 2,000 years ago

lmao at the world been 2000yrs old... or people been 2000yrs old...

[G-MAN]

Originally Posted by ibjamming

No No No! You're NOT seeing light from 13 billion years ago AND from the early universe! The light may be 13 billion years old, but it's most definitely NOT from the early universe.

IF the universe originated in a big bang from a POINT...then why can OLD things be seen from all directions. There should be a "source point" that should be able to be calculated. THE direction that everything can be traced back to. There isn't.

How the hell do you see NOW light that was emitted 13 billion years ago by something existing in a universe many billionths the size of what it is now? It's like seeing light that was emitted from the surface of an expanding balloon when the balloon was still small...and seeing it now that the balloon is blown up.


The only thing that would allow this...is a universe that is expanding MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than the speed of light. Like it was instantaneously the size it is now. And besides some WICKED bending...how does the billions of years OLD stuff appear to be all around us?

I think it's all a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

YouTube - 'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence...

The space between the galaxies expands, everything gets further away.

[sikander]

Originally Posted by ibjamming

No No No! You're NOT seeing light from 13 billion years ago AND from the early universe! The light may be 13 billion years old, but it's most definitely NOT from the early universe.

IF the universe originated in a big bang from a POINT...then why can OLD things be seen from all directions. There should be a "source point" that should be able to be calculated. THE direction that everything can be traced back to. There isn't.

This is a common misconception about the Big Bang theory. You can disagree or agree with it, but at least understand what it is you disagree with first.

Misconceptions about the Big Bang: Scientific American

[Miguel420]

ibjamming, the way I understand it is that the explosion happened 13 billion years ago, and the light given off is reaching the earth now. The sheer size of the universe is what allows us to see "through time", and the red shift is from the movement of the earth and explosion away from each other, which is relatively slow compared to the speed of light. I don't even know if this makes sense, I'm hella stoned.
The universe was still pretty huge back when the light came from this explosion, it has taken 13 billion years to reach the earth, or to reach the space where the earth exists right now.
Btw red shift is pretty indisputable, it's basically the doppler effect, it's known fact. Blue shift is observable too.

[Tyro01]

Originally Posted by ibjamming

OK then...please explain to me how I can see light NOW that came from a young much smaller universe 13 billion years ago. When that light was emitted, this part of the universe wasn't even here yet. So how am I seeing it now? It should have passed me LONG ago...long before we were even here. Long before the earth had even formed, the sun had formed.

The ONLY way this could possibly happen...us seeing light from the early universe...is for the "outer boundary" of the universe to act like a shock wave which moves much faster than light and created matter, stars, galaxies, as it moved out and away from the big bang. Light is lagging behind...a LOT behind. That's the ONLY possible way to see light from the beginning now.

So...you're going to base EVERYTHING on a red shift? How about if the red shift is REALLY caused by light being slowed, albeit very little, by whatever medium it travels through. I think light travels through a very small "aether" which has an almost imperceptible effect on it. Over distances of billions of light years, it adds up...for ANY experiment we could do here on earth, there is NO measurable effect. Think of it like sound waves slowly dissipating, waves on water slowly dissipating. Maybe over enough distance, light eventually slows to a stop too. I mean really...a photon, something formed when an electron moves to a lower state...has the energy to go forever? I don't think so.

The questions are bigger than you can imagine...we are like children, naive and ignorant.

And no..."God" didn't do it.

I don't get whats hard to understand. Light was emitted very long ago, at a great distance. It seems to us that the explosion has just happened but that is the deception of relevancy. By the redshift of the visible light we know that it was emitted very far away, far enough away that the universe had time to stretch the light due to expansion before the light reached us.

[ibjamming]

Originally Posted by sikander

This is a common misconception about the Big Bang theory. You can disagree or agree with it, but at least understand what it is you disagree with first.

http://forum.grasscity.com/Misconceptions%20about%20the%20Big%20Bang:%20Scientific%20American

Please enlighten me then... Your link didn't work. Everyone agrees the big bang came from a singularity...a single point. So how can you see "back to the beginning" in all directions? The universe is the skin of an expanding ball? There is no inside? There are many big bang theories...of which are you referring?

Originally Posted by Miguel420

ibjamming, the way I understand it is that the explosion happened 13 billion years ago, and the light given off is reaching the earth now. The sheer size of the universe is what allows us to see "through time", and the red shift is from the movement of the earth and explosion away from each other, which is relatively slow compared to the speed of light. I don't even know if this makes sense, I'm hella stoned.
The universe was still pretty huge back when the light came from this explosion, it has taken 13 billion years to reach the earth, or to reach the space where the earth exists right now.
Btw red shift is pretty indisputable, it's basically the doppler effect, it's known fact. Blue shift is observable too.

So if the universe can't expand faster than the speed of light...PROVEN by the red shift...how can light that was emitted 13 billion years ago just now be reaching us? The universe was nothing near the current size back then. It has had to have expanded to include where we are...SLOWER than that original light traveled to get here. So what happened to that light? What slowed it down so much to just be getting here now?

Says who? Scientists? So? You believe everything that "experts" tell you? I think they're wrong. They are after all just guessing. Nobody has gone out there to see if it's actually moving away. And...if everything is supposedly moving away from everything else...where does the blue shift come from? All the galaxies are supposedly moving away from each other with the expanding universe...yet I've heard that Andromeda is going to collide with our galaxy?!? How can that be?

Science at our stage...is barely better than religion. We KNOW nothing...

G-MAN,

I understand the expansion of the universe just as you show. Now answer me this. If the universe can't expand faster than light...how can light from the upper left corner reach ANY of the other points AFTER 13 billion years when the entire age is less than 14 billion years? There is nothing in the universe that has been pumping out massive amounts of light for 14 billion years. Anything that old should have gone dark billions of years ago...and we shouldn't be able to see it. Light from the upper left point is continuously hitting the other points as the grid expands. If anything, the light isn't as old as suggested. Or, the universe is much older than suggested.

I've seen theories of the universe expanding faster than the speed of light in the first few milliseconds...but I think it would gave to have continued that fast... It's the only thing that fits.

Personally, I don't believe the big bang. I believe there may have been an explosion staring things flying, but the "container", "the universe", was always here. Where it came from, I have no idea.

[ibjamming]

Originally Posted by Tyro01

I don't get whats hard to understand. Light was emitted very long ago, at a great distance. It seems to us that the explosion has just happened but that is the deception of relevancy. By the redshift of the visible light we know that it was emitted very far away, far enough away that the universe had time to stretch the light due to expansion before the light reached us.

But the distance WASN'T great when that light was emitted.

Let's say the universe is 14 billion years old. This light occurred about 1 billion years after the big bang. So, the universe was less than (by a LOT judging by the speed of universal expansion as determined by red shift) a billion light years across. So, if the entire universe is 1 billion light years across when this light was emitted, it should take 1 billion years for the light to reach us. NOT 13 billion. Because as the universe expands...it's expanding SLOWER than light speed. So the light may take a little longer than 1 billion years to reach us. No where near 13 billion years.