Scientists peer back 12 billion years - see galaxies forming naturally but no sign of god
Looking Back in Time 12 Billion Years With New Instruments on Herschel Space Observatory
ScienceDaily (Jan. 1, 2010) — An instrument package developed in part by the University of Colorado at Boulder for the $2.2 billion orbiting Herschel Space Observatory launched in May by the European Space Agency has provided one of the most detailed views yet of space up to 12 billion years back in time.
The December images have revealed thousands of newly discovered galaxies in their early stages of formation, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Jason Glenn, a co-investigator on the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver, or SPIRE instrument, riding aboard Herschel. The new images are being analyzed as part of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey, or HerMES, which involves more than 100 astronomers from six countries.
Equipped with three cameras including SPIRE, the Herschel Space Observatory was launched in May 2009 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. The spacecraft -- about one and one-half times the diameter of the Hubble Space Telescope -- is orbiting nearly 1 million miles from Earth.
Herschel is the first space observatory to make high-resolution images at submillimeter wavelengths, which are longer than visible and infrared light waves and shorter than radio waves. SPIRE was designed to look for emissions from clouds and dust linked to star-forming regions in the Milky Way and beyond, said Glenn. The most recent observations were made in the constellation Ursa Major, which includes the Big Dipper.
CU-Boulder is receiving roughly $2 million from NASA for the combined support of SPIRE instrument development and science data analysis during the lifetime of the orbiting telescope, said Glenn, an associate professor in CU-Boulder's astrophysical and planetary sciences department. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and CU-Boulder built essential instrumentation for the telescope used to make the most recent observations, said Glenn, also a member of CU-Boulder's Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy.
"The submillimeter sky is absolutely paved with galaxies," Glenn said. The newest images are "amazingly clear and deep," which enables astronomers to detect distant galaxies they would have no chance of discovering with current ground-based telescopes, he said. Since the light being observed with Herschel left the galaxies billions of years ago on its journey toward our solar system, the images are helping to reveal early star formation activity as well as the growth of supermassive black holes in galaxies.
The Herschel team expects to discover hundreds of thousands of new galaxies at very early stages of their formations -- some more than 10 billion years old, he said. A single image from Herschel released in December revealed 10 times as many galaxies as have been seen before by all of the world's telescopes observing the skies in submillimeter wavelengths, said Glenn.
A major goal of the Herschel mission is to discover how early galaxies formed and evolved to give rise to present-day galaxies like our own, he said. Distant galaxies imaged by Herschel are so far away astronomers actually are looking at conditions as early as just over a billion or so years after the Big Bang some 13 billion years ago. The SPIRE camera allows Herschel to detect radiation from very cold and distant objects, such as young stars and evolving galaxies.
The SPIRE team is studying the physical and chemical processes that take place in the distant interstellar medium to learn more about how stars are formed from molecular clouds, Glenn said. The submillimeter colors of the galaxies in the new images reveal information about their temperatures and distances -- bluer galaxies are relatively hotter and nearer, while the redder galaxies are cooler and farther away, he said.
Glenn said CU-Boulder also is partnering on a ground-based telescope project known as the Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope, or CCAT -- slated for completion in 2013 in the Atacama desert of Chile at 18,400 feet in altitude -- which will be able to zoom in on regions imaged by Herschel and isolate individual galaxies with 10 times greater detail. CASA is working to raise roughly $5 million in private capital toward the cost of CCAT, Glenn said.
SPIRE is one of three instruments on Herschel and has both a camera and a spectrometer. Led by the United Kingdom, SPIRE also includes participation by a number of American, Canadian and Chinese institutions. Glenn's group is particularly interested in characterizing the faintest, most distant galaxies, "which will push the orbiting observatory to its limits of sensitivity," he said.
"Herschel is providing a whole new window on the universe," said Glenn. "This project provides a fantastic opportunity for top scientists from around the world to work together to understand how stars and galaxies form and evolve."
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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Stop this insanity right now!
How dare you imply that god cannot be found in the telescopic record of science!
He is there, of course, and since you cannot see him, it merely implies that you are a heathen unworthy of his image!
I might mention that when my mother-in-law commented that she had been "downstairs, spending some time with jesus," my query as to who was going to pick up his part of the heating bill (I live in Minnesota) was met with a bit of a gimlet stare...
I have an 80yo mother, a former missionary to the middle east (Syria and Lebanon) who is very much the same as your m-in-law. Of course I'm shameless in trying to undercut mum's position given it's fraught with an ark full of perfectly matched animals, eager to copulate after their long confinement below decks, the entire phylum of arthropoda and gaia knows what in the way of plant matter. According to mum, refraction of raindrops is a semaphore used by the lord, his inability to appear to us properly not diminishing his delight in semiotics always artfully disguised as processes of nature in order to weed out those too dubious to embrace him in the absence of all proof, thereby demonstrating the guileless alone love him true.
As to the new 'scope, I guess our theist friends will simply point out that god exists somewhere on the far side of an oort cloud of incomprehension surrounding the big bang.
Oh, the pain of it all...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
That is not fair. The pictures are two dementional. God could be hidden behind one of those galaxies.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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Atheistextremist, I've been looking for this story because I recall how you titled the thread. I just wish they mentioned there is no sign of god in the article but they don't. But I can see you inferred that from the article.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091230154511.htm
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com
And you will never find him out there. Lets just say I now own a golden gazzoo and god is in hiding deep inside a moon about uranus.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
They finally found Jesus:
Actually to me it looks more like the Crypt keeper:
They found a Muhammed nebula, but it blew itself up and took 40 other nebulas with it.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Now why would anyone expect to find the creator of the universe in some huge expensive telescope? Come on people! I know where he is right now. He is all curled up on my smelly pants that I wore all day.
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You KNOW god is not hiding in a moon about uranus. That because he's in your anus!!
But seriously, WHY don't they have the guts in that article to simply say there is no sign in the cosmos of the god that humans speak of. They know it's true so why don't they have the guts to say that??
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com
Because he is invisible, or outside our universe, or everywhere and nowhere blah blah, there is always an excuse.
My simplified "devil went down to georgia" theme failed, oh well!
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
At least we have that final letter Einstein wrote to the Guardian newspaper where he states religion is a product of human weakness and just superstitions. That's so cool and really helps us out so I think I'll start a new thread on it.
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com