You are not logged in. Please register or login.
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Re: Giant mystery blob found near dawn of time
WASHINGTON - A strange giant space “blob” spotted when the universe was relatively young has got astronomers puzzled.
Using space and ground telescopes, astronomers looked back to when the universe was only 800 million years old and found something that was out of proportion and out of time. It was gaseous, big, and emitted a certain type of radiation, said study lead author Masami Ouchi, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Calif.
Scientists don’t even know what to call it. So they just called it a radiation-emitting “blob.” They used that horror-film staple 34 times in their peer-reviewed study, which will be published in next month’s edition of the Astrophysical Journal. More formally, they named it Himiko, after a legendary ancient Japanese queen.
The photo of it is beyond fuzzy.
“The puzzle is — what is it?” said California Institute of Technology astronomer Richard Ellis, who wasn’t on the research team but praised the find. “Often a puzzle leads to a breakthrough. My nose tells me that this object is rather special.”
Ouchi and Ellis said one possibility is that by chance, astronomers captured the moment a galaxy was forming in the early universe — something that never has been seen before.
As astronomers gaze deeper into space, they are looking farther back in time. What Ouchi found was from 12.9 billion years ago. Only three other objects have been seen that are from deeper in time and space.
But what’s most remarkable about this blob is its size: It's 55,000 light-years long, which is comparable to the radius of the disk-shaped Milky Way. According to many theories of the universe, nothing was supposed to be that big at that time in the universe. The other objects from that period are far smaller, Ouchi said.
Ouchi said it also could be two colliding galaxies, or might have something to do with a black hole.
© 2009 The Associated Press
Re: Giant mystery blob found near dawn of time
I think that's God.
The scary thing about this is that one of these days we're gonna see something we're not supposed to see. We keep looking deeper and deeper, and eventually we're gonna see the exact moment that the universe was created.
Re: Giant mystery blob found near dawn of time
To be completely honest I find things like this scary.
It's so amazing what we can do.
- mickronson
- Rep: 118
Re: Giant mystery blob found near dawn of time
its that giant greek space god face, the one that was in Star Trek TOS
Re: Giant mystery blob found near dawn of time
Maybe I need to go back to science class, but how the hell do they look back into time??
When you look out in space, you are literally going back in time. The distances are vast, and light takes forever to travel such distances. So what we see now(example-that photo) isn't what is there now, but thats what it looked like billions of years ago. In fact, a lot of the amazing pictures Hubble has taken are of objects that are in fact dead right now.
The deeper in space we look, the further back in time we go. Eventually, we're gonna see when the clock started. We might even see what created the clock.
Its why I laugh when people say big bang theories are bullshit. All you have to do is grab a telescope and look up to see something went bang.
Re: Giant mystery blob found near dawn of time
its that giant greek space god face, the one that was in Star Trek TOS
Thank you. I knew I was referencing something when I said it was God, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I think that's it.
If it isn't God, it's Unicron on his way to devour us.
(Just in case I hadn't amassed enough nerd points already with the Star Trek thing)
Re: Giant mystery blob found near dawn of time
"The Motion Picture", not the TV Series 
.
