If you would be considering intervening dust between us and it, then this redness would affect the whole view, making all of the galaxies in the photo red. This isn’t so, so it is a pristine view.

I’m not disputing the math, and I’m certainly not adverse to using different frames of reference where appropriate. I’m addressing the semantic issue of what language is used to communicate these things in the public sphere.

And yes, shortly after posting my last response I realized my mistake concerning the size of the universe when what we observe as the CMB radiation was emitted. As you note, it wasn’t crucial to the point since I only wanted to show that we describe the universe as having been much smaller at that time. And we DO describe the universe as being much smaller at the time the CMB was emitted.

From my perspective there is no logical advantage to describing these events “from the perspective of the photon.” I’m not a photon, nor is anyone participating in the observations or discussions. Further, if the subject of discussion is “what happened” and “when did it happen” then we need a reference point in which causality is preserved. If a photon experiences all events simultaneously then this doesn’t help us much in determining a sequence of events for the purpose of our understanding of cosmic history.

In fact, I’m finding it difficult to even contemplate the utility of a cosmology with no references to a past. Perhaps, if I were a non-corporeal alien residing in a wormhole somewhere with no concept of linear time that might be useful. As it is, I am a human with all of the evolutionary baggage that might entail.

To nitpick, rather than say that the galaxy in question is 12.9 billion light years away, it might be better to say that the light took 12.9 billion years to reach us, or simply give the galaxy’s redshift of 7.2.

One area where this might be relevant is in the packing of nucleons in the nuclei of atoms. Right now N/P converges on the Golden Ratio as Z (atomic number) increases. One specialist, Prof. Jan Boeyens in South Africa, believes that nucleons pack according to a 3D (perhaps 4D) analogue to the double Golden Spirals seen, for instance, in the seed heads of sunflowers- protons and neutrons are of different sizes, but also exchange identities as well as have the ability to travel, when paired, right through each other. So dynamically one might have the kind of size/position cline within the nucleus that fits the Golden Spiral bill.

Many properties of the nucleus would be affected by packing parameters- if these change due to spacetime curvature, even slightly, perhaps it would explain, partly, the kinds of biases we see in the earliest galaxies with regard to star formation and stellar properties.

Brighter ones [population III stars] couldn’t be THAT much brighter. [than Eta Carinae - ed.] The Eddington limit sets a bound on how bright a star can be.[Brackets added.]

Apparently as I understand it, things were a little different in the earliest epoch of comological history. (Or pre – very very much pre-history really when you think about it!) Due from what I’ve read to the extremely low metallicity.

Even today we’ve recently found a few stars that are pushing the upper mass edges of the Eddington Limit such as the Pistol Star and R136a1 the most massive star yet found in our Galaxy. (Click on my name for the latters wiki-page.)

@21. Dragonchild : Good point there about the lack of dust – Fair enough.

Although maybe there’d have been a lot more gas clouds which could have ended up being somewhat opaque possibly?

No it isn’t. Not if one speaks in terms of hyperbolic geometry.

You can see wonderful examples in the work of M.C. Escher:

http://euler.slu.edu/escher/index.php/Hyperbolic_Geometry

BTW: Emission at the time when decoupling occurred (the radiation we now see as the Cosmic Microwave Background) the universe was hardly “infinitesimally small”. But that’s a moot nit-pick and in no way alters the principle if one considers, say, gravitational waves from much nearer time zero.

So, it is entirely logical to apprehend the “now” upon absorbing a photon as simultaneous to the “now” at which the photon “was” emitted. As you appear to note yourself, for the photon, no time elapses between emission and absorption. From the photon’s frame of reference, the photon hasn’t traveled through any distance in space at all. It is not absurd to use the appropriate reference frame. Euclidean geometry isn’t the only logically consistent geometry.

There is a certain poetry and emancipation in the realization that our reference frame is not the last word, and that sunlight striking your eye is as fresh as the instant it lept off the surface of the Sun – even though from our point of view it requires that light 8 minutes and 20-odd seconds to make the journey. It may be disconcerting to think of your retina or skin being almost literally in contact with the Sun’s photosphere, but there’s nothing absurd about it considered from the photon’s point of view. For the same reason, it’s not at all a logical absurdity to think of the Big Bang as going on right “NOW”. Its not JUST a moment that happened a long time ago. The question of ‘when’ and how things look to observers depends on the reference frame one chooses. From the viewpoint of the photons (which were ultraviolet wavelengths “then” and since red-shifted to the microwave we detect from the background) it’s still happening. There simply is no such thing as an absolute “now”.

I take no part in the semantic notion that it’s only correct to phrase things as “in the past” or solely “as it happens to be seen.” As far as I’m concerned, it’s entirely appropriate to phrase these occurrences either way as long as the perspective from which it’s drawn is understood.

Consider this: Relativity states that information can only be conveyed at the speed of light – implying that causality occurs at the speed of light – implying that things don’t happen until you see them happen. This is a popular sentiment with many of us who are cosmically inclined.

However, we are able to observe the cosmic microwave background radiation emanating from matter during a period nearly contemporaneous with the initial expansion of the early stages of the universe. By the logic of “it happens as we see it happening” then we must state that the hyperinflation of the early universe is currently happening right now in a sphere with a 13 billion light year radius – when the universe was infinitesimally small!

This is a logical absurdity.

Conclusion: It’s perfectly appropriate to say that “it happened long ago” or “we observe it happening now” as long as everyone understands the frame of reference.

Definitely distance (more like redshift), but dust? There wasn’t much dust at all in the Pop III era; almost none actually. It’s one of the defining characterics of that time (ugh I feel like I just described1980s music or something). There might be some intervening dust between here and there (or should I say now and then), but then wouldn’t that have obscured it from Hubble completely?

Cool nonetheless, but my mind keeps “translating” your use of the present tense to past tense. (I doubt seriously that it is still churning out stars at a massive rate!

Well, it “is” churning them out in the sense that the light we’re seeing came from the time when it was happening. Yes, it’s probably scientifically inaccurate to say that that galaxy (or whatever it is/was) “is” doing anything, but from the standpoint of “we’re seeing it happen”, present tense makes sense.

Great pic, Phil; thanks for sharing!

Brighter ones couldn’t be THAT much brighter. The Eddington limit sets a bound on how bright a star can be.

When trying to imagine this I keep visualizing something like various regions of a thick dusty nebula collapsing towards a common centre of mass to form the cores of new stars. What about the early universe, hydrogen helium cloud scenario I mention above: There wouldn’t be any hydrocarbons/soot in this early gas cloud. Is that because all nebulae/PHA molecular clouds remnants of first generation stars?

I saw a video about 10 years ago whereby a couple of scientists were experimenting in trying to clear a heavily smoked filled room as quickly as possible, by using various frequencies of soundwaves emanating from large speaker cones. The idea was to cause the smoke particles to coalesce together into large clumps which then either fell to the floor, or floated around the sealed room on moving air currents. The walls of this experimental room were clear glass or perspex. These little clumps that floated around the experimental chamber so reminded me of the Bok globules we see ‘floating’ around in nebulae.

The experiment was a success and I think its development would have been used to clear heavily smoke filled rooms for firefighters to enter. Did anyone els see this video or know if the technique ever became used in real life fire rescue scenarios?

Given that the universe is (we think) finite in size, could it just be that the percentage of the universe that is that far away from us is very small? To take an example, if I had a way to detect humans far away (following the curvature of the Earth), I’d find there were many fewer that were 25,000 miles away than 20,000 miles away, but that would not be due to any limitations in my detector, nor to the fact that the humans 20,000 miles away evolved earlier than those 25,000 miles away.

the Universe was much closer together a couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang than it is today. Why, therefore, did light from the edges of the Universe take so much time to get to us? There shouldn’t have been that much space to traverse.

#Phil, any data on what that looks like in IR and radio (though I doubt we’d get good measurements from radio at that distance)?