Stellar blast is record-breaker - Democratic Underground

IndianaGreen

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Wed Oct-28-09 05:43 PM
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Stellar blast is record-breaker

Stellar blast is record-breaker

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

Astronomers have confirmed that an exploding star spotted by Nasa's Swift satellite is the most distant cosmic object to be detected by telescopes.

In the journal Nature, two teams of astronomers report their observations of a gamma-ray burst from a star that died 13.1 billion light-years away.

The massive star died about 630 million years after the Big Bang.

UK astronomer Nial Tanvir described the observation as "a step back in cosmic time".

Professor Tanvir led an international team studying the afterglow of the explosion, using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8329865.stm

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NRaleighLiberal

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Wed Oct-28-09 05:45 PM
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1. Translate that to Palin years. Betcha there are dinosaur tracks on that star!

Seriously, how to fundies react to this sort of science news when their view of time is only a few thousand years???

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Ikonoklast

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Wed Oct-28-09 05:55 PM
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3. Light used to move lots faster back then, silly!

It's been slowing down ever since.

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wtbymark

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Wed Oct-28-09 05:56 PM
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4. This is when their small intellects blurt out....'Librulsekulerbiass' lol

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wroberts189

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Wed Oct-28-09 05:49 PM
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2. interesting post thx... more from article..."stellar-sized" black hole

Edited on Wed Oct-28-09 05:51 PM by wroberts189

He told BBC News that his team was able to observe the afterglow for 10 days, while the gamma ray burst itself lasted around 12 seconds.

The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is an example of one of the most violent explosions in the Universe.

It is thought to have been associated with the cataclysmic death of a massive star - triggered by the centre of the star collapsing to form a "stellar-sized" black hole.

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wtbymark

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Wed Oct-28-09 05:59 PM
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5. just think...we only have 670million odd years more to look back..

before we actually see evidence/reminence of the big bang itself
kewl

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wroberts189

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Wed Oct-28-09 06:03 PM
Response to Reply #5

6. Yes ..good point. Thats like minutes in Universe time. (13.5-14 billion years)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe

The age of the universe is the time elapsed between the Big Bang and the present day. Current theory and observations suggest that the universe is between 13.5 and 14 billion years old.<1> The uncertainty range has been obtained by the agreement of a number of scientific research projects. These projects included background radiation measurements and more ways to measure the expansion of the universe. Background radiation measurements give the cooling time of the universe since the Big Bang. Expansion of the universe measurements give accurate data to calculate the age of the universe.

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