Astronomers see most distant galaxy yet
Speaking of objects in space that are too faint to see with the naked eye, astronomers using a telescope in Chile report in the journal Nature that they've identified the most distant light source 
ever detected.
It's a primitive galaxy, seen as it appeared 13.1 billion years ago, no more than 600 million year after the Big Bang that scientists believe marked the birth of the universe.
Detection of the galaxy - barely a smudge on an image from the Hubble Space Telescope that contains a zoo of odd-looking early galaxies - pushes back scientists' view of the early universe, and enhances their understanding of the conditions that dominated at the time, and the timing, location and nature of the changes that were taking place as the first stars and galaxies formed.
Here's the New York Times' take on the findings. Here's a link to Nature.
Comments
The spherical nature of space becomes more obvious as we can see these distances when looking in one direction.
The obvious question is if we develop the ability to see another 600+ million light years past this galaxy...will we see the big bang...the beginning of time?? And then what...
FR: No. We'll never see the Big Bang, just its aftermath. Scientists say conditions immediately after the Big Bang caused the expanding infant universe to be opaque to light. One of the goals for astronomers working on these projects is to learn when, exactly, things began to clear up, allowing us to see what was going on with the very first stars. Cosmologists believe it occurred after about 400 million years, as things began to cool, allowing protons and electrons to join and form neutral hydrogen. The hydrogen began to come together to form the first stars. Radiation from those first stars caused what's called the "re-ionization" of the universe. And that's what finally allows us to see as far back as we have. There's a pretty good, brief story on this discovery here: http://bit.ly/c5jKL4
Posted by: Alex | October 22, 2010 8:06 PM