Space Explosion Is Farthest Thing Ever Seen

[transplant99]

A stellar explosion has smashed the record for most distant object in the known universe.


The gamma-ray burst came from about 13 billion light-years away, and represents a relic from when the universe was just 630 million years old.

A light-year is the distance that light can travel in a year, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). So astronomers are seeing this particular burst as it existed 13 billion years ago, because the light took that long to reach Earth observers.

Just mindboggling.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/spacee...tthingeverseen

[CaptainCrunch]

Xenu;s meth lab had a bit of an accident

[CaptainCrunch]

"The burst most likely arose from the explosion of a massive death star," said Derek Fox, an astrophysicist at Penn State University. "We're seeing the demise of a ultimate weapon for peace — and probably the deaths of millions of innocent contracters."

Those s, they blew it up.

[Wookie]

So this happened before the Earth?

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Those s, they blew it up.

BEFORE


AFTER

[ken0042]

Here's what I don't get.

So apparently the universe is about 14 billion years old. It all started with a big bang, and everything (including our solar system) is moving outwards.

If this happened 13 billion years ago, how did we manage to get 13 billion light years aways from it in 630 million years? Does that mean our galaxy is moving or once moved at 20 times the speed of light?

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Here's what I don't get.

So apparently the universe is about 14 billion years old. It all started with a big bang, and everything (including our solar system) is moving outwards.

If this happened 13 billion years ago, how did we manage to get 13 billion light years aways from it in 630 million years? Does that mean our galaxy is moving or once moved at 20 times the speed of light?

Time speeds up the faster you travel + Jesus = Your answer.

But seriously, I think it has to do with velocity.

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Here's what I don't get.

So apparently the universe is about 14 billion years old. It all started with a big bang, and everything (including our solar system) is moving outwards.

If this happened 13 billion years ago, how did we manage to get 13 billion light years aways from it in 630 million years? Does that mean our galaxy is moving or once moved at 20 times the speed of light?

Chaos theory.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Here's what I don't get.

So apparently the universe is about 14 billion years old. It all started with a big bang, and everything (including our solar system) is moving outwards.

If this happened 13 billion years ago, how did we manage to get 13 billion light years aways from it in 630 million years? Does that mean our galaxy is moving or once moved at 20 times the speed of light?

I don't quite understand it completely myself, but the size of the visible universe is abotu 45 billion lightyears in any direction. It has to do with the fact that all of space is expanding, so even though the light took 13 billion years to reach us, doesn't mean that we were 13 billion light years away from the object when it blew up.

[worth]

Think of the universe like a loaf of raisin bread. As the dough rises, the raisins get father apart. The volume of the universe is expanding along with galaxies traveling at their speed. So it is a combination of both. The raisins (galaxies) are moving apart, but the space they sit in is also moving apart, which allows for the galaxies to get very far apart from one another, and essentially overcome speed of light barriers without actually breaking any physical laws.

The volume of space has expanded many billions of light years across in 13 billion years.

[photon]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Here's what I don't get.

So apparently the universe is about 14 billion years old. It all started with a big bang, and everything (including our solar system) is moving outwards.

If this happened 13 billion years ago, how did we manage to get 13 billion light years aways from it in 630 million years? Does that mean our galaxy is moving or once moved at 20 times the speed of light?

You've got it backwards, this event happened when the universe was 630 million years old, and it's taken 13 billion years for the light to reach us (and it's taken 13 billion years for us to get as far away from it as we are now).

[Madman]

Originally Posted by photon

and it's taken 13 billion years for us to get as far away from it as we are now

Fwew, that was good foresight on our part.

[worth]

technically speaking we never "got away" from it. solar system wasn't formed until about 4 billion years ago, so the universe expanded exponentially after the big bang, much faster than the speed of light, then after 630 million years of expansion this thing blew up and sent out photons into space, then 9 billion years later our solar system formed, then 4 billion years after that we saw the explosion.

[CaptainCrunch]

Jesus tells me that the solar system is only 300 years old, and it fits into the palm of his hand, hopefully he doesn't have fits of spontaneous applause..

[photon]

Originally Posted by worth

technically speaking we never "got away" from it. solar system wasn't formed until about 4 billion years ago, so the universe expanded exponentially after the big bang, much faster than the speed of light, then after 630 million years of expansion this thing blew up and sent out photons into space, then 9 billion years later our solar system formed, then 4 billion years after that we saw the explosion.

Lol well done I've been out-picky-ed.

[Ziggy Lidstrom]

Does this discovery lead to anything palpable then?

[photon]

If you mean will the discovery lead to a new flavour of ice cream? Not really no.

More info here:

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithab...visible_un.php

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by worth

Think of the universe like a loaf of raisin bread. As the dough rises, the raisins get father apart. The volume of the universe is expanding along with galaxies traveling at their speed. So it is a combination of both. The raisins (galaxies) are moving apart, but the space they sit in is also moving apart, which allows for the galaxies to get very far apart from one another, and essentially overcome speed of light barriers without actually breaking any physical laws.

The volume of space has expanded many billions of light years across in 13 billion years.

What's outside this ever-expanding universe?

Another ever-expanding universe? And what's beyond that?

What if the universe isn't the boundary of everything?

Time to go home and kick the dog.

Cowperson

[MelBridgeman]

Jesus's miracles at work!

[onetwo_threefour]

So this is the closest thing we have ever seen to the edge of Hawking's light cone. It is pretty close to the edge of the visible universe for us then since we'll never see anything that lies at a distance greater in light years than the age of the universe assuming that the inflationary model is correct and there is matter or energy that moved so far so fast that we'll never see it. Pretty interesting to think that we can observe things that are almost at the natural limits of what we can possibly observe.