Comments on: Hubble digs deep to see baby galaxies

By: GWamp

GWamp — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:36:47 +0000

@Dave72 (#47) (and any others who took to his questions)
This question always comes to mind when I see images of distant stars/galaxies. Not even in reference to are they still in that location (they’re obviously moving, so no), but do they even exist anymore?

The light emitted from these objects takes SO LONG to reach us, could it be that by the time we are seeing these objects, that if we went to them in real-time (or instantaneously, if you will), to their current location, would they still be or would they have fizzled out? Are we still seeing them simply because the light took so long to reach us, but they actually no longer exist?

At the time of this image, some of these objects were some 13 billion light years away or 475,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000-4,750,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (475 septillion-4.75 octillion) miles away (depending on if I was off a zero or not!) I don’t even know how long it would take light to travel that distance, and it may take a long time (if ever) for us to finally see them disappear, but…is this concept making any sense or is it just in my mind??? LoL I’m not a mathematician or astrophysicist by any stretch of the imagination. What math classes I passed in school, I did so with a “C”! I was even looking up the names to these numbers as I was typing this out, and it could be riddled with flaw.

Just something to envoke some thought.

By: Happy Birthday, Hubble! — Griffin Science

Happy Birthday, Hubble! — Griffin Science — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 21:45:38 +0000

[...] image above is my fav Hubble image for many reasons… post your fav on your [...]

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 19:27:42 +0000

Big Bang happened everywhere.

By: dhvl

dhvl — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:14:32 +0000

If the Big Bang occurred to create space, where did it occur?

By: DJGriz

DJGriz — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:32:19 +0000

Can anyone further explain the 2d balloon expansion in 3d environment? I don’t quite get how you expand it to another dimension. Or link with info?? thanks

By: Tony

Tony — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:14:38 +0000

To Joe Meils,

I am not sure if others have answered your questions better, but a 1-sentence explanation goes like this: your assumption that the Big Bang occurred at one point is not right (just like there are tons of other misconceptions about the Big Bang, it is not a “Bang” after all). The Big Bang occurred *everywhere*. It created all space.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:29:58 +0000

Is there a written analysis of this image anywhere that actually explains what we see in this image? For instance, where does the info come from that leads BA to claim the little red dots come from 600 million years after the Big Bang (other than the fact that the hubblesite caption makes this claim)?

I’m especially interested to learn how this image shows those tiny red dots to be ‘baby’ galaxies, and how those galaxies differ from the galaxies we see around us. Google isn’t helping me much with this one.

Ooh, here’s a start: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/hubbledeepfield/

By: Basta

Basta — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:24:03 +0000

@79 Whoa! I didn’t even think to think of it like that, but now that I do it makes sense. To be frank, I don’t have my head wrapped totally around the special relativity thing (general relativity, more so, but still). I can get my head around this article, which makes me very happy as a quantum dilettante and somebody who never did great at math. I’m an English major. Maybe if I read up on the theory of this stuff and get to understand it better, I’ll be more inclined to try out the math again.

And OP, why the “terrible scale” of the universe?! It’s wonderful! Really, you could go to inversely comparable powers of scale with subatomic particles and even things like the Planck length. The way I see it, we’re right in the center of all this, like a famous piece of art at the Louvre. That’s the best place to be, not only from a humanistic point of view, but from a scientific one too. If a galaxy could think, do you think it would be in a good position to contemplate itself AS WELL AS an atom? That’s hard to reconcile without our unique point of view.

By: paul

paul — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:53:15 +0000

This may seem like a silly question, which only occured to me last night.
Given the level of detail the space telescope hubble can see, why are there no pictures of planets, moons, and other larger objects within these galaxies?
It seems like somebody has missed the point along the way, surely the detail should be on the objects making up these clusters?

By: itskurtins

itskurtins — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:12:12 +0000

You might also want to look for some gravitational lensing.