Hubble has spotted a galaxy 13.3 billion light years away. The universe was only 0.47 billion years old when that light set off.

One wonders if it's possible to spot the boundaries of the very early universe.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9682959/NASA-locates-most-distant-galaxy-ever-discovered.html

Serious question;

How do ythey measure light years????

How accurate is this measuring device????

Or is it just so because a 'Scientist' said so????

Ian K said...
They've established that the universe is expanding, stars farther away are receding at a greater speed, so the red shift of the light they send out is a measure of distance.

hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/redshf.html

But given the varying and unknown composition of the medium (space) over such a large distance could that not also cause red-shift?

Also, some very well conducted experiments showed the speed of light has changed a bit (slowing) and nobody can refute it entirely (but most ignore it as it fks up soem of the theories we are fed as truth)

I will agree about trying to find holes in others theories for most sciences, but in theoretical physics and astronomy etc it seems to be quite the opposite. Anything that makes the universe old, very very large, and expanding, is well accepted. Anything to the contrary is discarded much more easily.

Mark _australia said...
I will agree about trying to find holes in others theories for most sciences, but in theoretical physics and astronomy etc it seems to be quite the opposite. Anything that makes the universe old, very very large, and expanding, is well accepted. Anything to the contrary is discarded much more easily.

A contrary theory has to agree with observations, if it has trouble accommodating observations it will be easily discarded. I stayed with cosmology as being the most self-critical of the sciences as none of its findings have applications that could be of interest to the commercial world.

"Wonders of the solar system" will be on SBS in 5 minutes, you'll have to wait another 3 hours Mark, I'll have the jump on you

The thing i don't get is (and maybe its because i have been drinking a lot today), but if a solar system is measured as being 13.3 billion light years away (distance) and physics largely agrees that matter can't travel faster than light, then at a minimum it must have taken 13.3 billion years for that solar sytem to get that far away from the epi-centre of the 'big bang', then another 13.3 billion years for that light to travel back as far as earth so that we can see it.. Which makes the universe a minimum of 26.6 billion years old.. at least 13.3 billion years older than current estimates..

Does that make sense?

Latest therory indicates "NO" big bang, as there is no tell tail evedence left over to show it actually happened.
According to so called big Gurus of science, they are hinting on a rapid expansion, in preferance. Well they are, until one of them finds the missing chemical trail to support a big bang.

Mark _australia said...
But given the varying and unknown composition of the medium (space) over such a large distance could that not also cause red-shift?

Also, some very well conducted experiments showed the speed of light has changed a bit (slowing) and nobody can refute it entirely (but most ignore it as it fks up soem of the theories we are fed as truth)

I would expect all the possibilities to be canvased however there is a history in cosmology of ignoring odd stuff until it becomes un-ignorable. There was a bloke who proposed a heliocentric solar system 500 years before Copernicus but he didn't get a look in. Fritz Zwickie recognized the existence of dark matter in the 50s but that was ignored until recently when accurate observation made it inescapable. Remarkably it accounts for 4 or 5 times as much mass as what we can see. It was thought to be garden variety dust rocks and gas but more recently it's believed to be something different like neutrinos. What it is is a mystery.

I don't know about speed of light changing. That would be taken with a great deal of skepticism I imagine because it's fundamental to the description of space/time.
Recently (2010?) there was an experiment done that involved shooting particles from Geneva to Italy (look up OPERA) and they recorded speeds that were a tiny bit over light speed. They checked their results from very many events and eventually decided to publish. It created a big stir. It was not well received by some who accused them of sensationalism and insufficient care with their experiment. Anyway a year or so later it was shown to be incorrect.

Light speed changes in different media and there is a lot of free hydrogen out there not to mention dark matter. That affects light with its mass but if it has refractive properties I don't know. Maybe there is room for error there. If light was red shifted more than expected that would give a distance/speed error. Red shift can be checked (calibrated) at local short distances using parallax and at then further distances using standard candles. I don't know if it can be checked for very long distances.

Motwal dude. I typed a lot and then lost it.

Just google it, there is a fk-load about speed of light slowing (from about 2002 - 2005) and the so-called retorts are pretty weak. Nil really, since as the grant $$$ are not to be found in debunking long-held beliefs are they?
Then suddenly about a year ago CERN had particles breaking the c barrier and what do we get? More theories, not a re-examination of the science that led to the observable conclusion that c may change.

No, suddenly photons are special and can do that (after being told for years nothing can)

It is ignored as the philosophy or religion of astrophysics starts with the pretext that everything is really really fkn old and expanding.

ANYTHING that may suggest otherwise is discarded as creationist claptrap or conspiracy theories.

Trouble is, claiming a photon to be massless and thereby able to exceed c - even briefly - means Mr Planck, or Mr Einstein, or Mr Schrodinger is wrong. The photon plainly and obviously has a wave nature and a particle nature so I am tipping it is NOT the latter bloke.

^^^ don't waste too much of your life on it - nor hold your breath - every chance I am very bloody wrong lol

Then again, photons have a particle nature - they carry momentum FFS - yet they have been seen to exceed c.
Plus c has been shown to change (a bit) .......... and all this is ignored?

My point is simply that some good science is often ignored due to the prevailing assumptions held by 'the establishment'.
The fact that Nature published the research about the change in c is heartening - but the lack of proper counter-research is very sad. Seems it was ignored because it may not fit with our preconceived ideas - rather than being experimentally debunked.

Mark _australia said...

Trouble is, claiming a photon to be massless and thereby able to exceed c - even briefly - means Mr Planck, or Mr Einstein, or Mr Schrodinger is wrong. The photon plainly and obviously has a wave nature and a particle nature so I am tipping it is NOT the latter bloke.

this is great, does this mean I can have my cat back?

Mark _australia said...
Just google it, there is a fk-load about speed of light slowing (from about 2002 - 2005) and the so-called retorts are pretty weak. Nil really, since as the grant $$$ are not to be found in debunking long-held beliefs are they?

If you could prove that the speed of light is changing you'd be getting your research lab much fame and recognition.

Then suddenly about a year ago CERN had particles breaking the c barrier and what do we get? More theories, not a re-examination of the science that led to the observable conclusion that c may change.

No, suddenly photons are special and can do that (after being told for years nothing can)

It is ignored as the philosophy or religion of astrophysics starts with the pretext that everything is really really fkn old and expanding.

ANYTHING that may suggest otherwise is discarded as creationist claptrap or conspiracy theories.

Trouble is, claiming a photon to be massless and thereby able to exceed c - even briefly - means Mr Planck, or Mr Einstein, or Mr Schrodinger is wrong. The photon plainly and obviously has a wave nature and a particle nature so I am tipping it is NOT the latter bloke.

That was so last year. It was very exciting while they looked at what could have caused the readings to show particles traveling faster than light, and most importantly tried to reproduce it, because it would have shown serious flaws in our understanding of the universe. It was never reproduced and the mistakes were found, as everyone expected. Not as exciting as we'd hoped. (you can google it, it was probably the biggest story in science last year/no coverup)

The people that observed > c speeds said...
Despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the stability of the analysis, the potentially great impact of the result motivates the continuation of our studies in order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results.

You should write them Mark.

I wish I could say something about this (Universe organizing)... but I am afraid that my theory will be instantly discarded based on English grammar mistake...
that is the problem with science... that must be always expressed in known linguistic form .. (this is a bit for me like painting beautiful landscape picture using watered down different shades of s**t.)

...Hang on. No, that can't be right. You can't see light from the very early universe, like the first moments, because that took place right here, where this next comma is on your screen, and the light from that has since long gone ...except that space did expand much faster than light in the universe's early history ...so that very early light shone out (also) from a point that is now a long way away...

...I think it really depends on when this super rapid expansion took place, and how much it expanded in that short time. It will form a kind of horizon.

As for the universe expanding or not; everything is red. And not just light (aka energy) in the visible spectrum. This points to doppler shifting, thus everything is moving away from us. Sure, you can come up with some other theories, and people do all the time, that's science. But the most likely scenario is expansion. I don't know why people are all uptight about some "religion of science" that is above refute. If you can prove otherwise everybody will listen and the understanding of our universe will change. You can't just say "What about this idea? Why aren't you listening to me? I'm listening to me.", you have to actually prove it. At the moment the most likely scenario is the ill-named "big bang theory". Prove otherwise.

in mine theoretical model the only fundamental constant is the TIME. Other factors like forms of energy, forces and dimensions that we so carry about are derivatives only....
there are also few other factors that we are unaware or hardly poses means to calculate now (like entropy to start with)

dinsdale said...

Macroscien said...
in mine theoretical model the only fundamental constant is the TIME

Hmmm. Unfortunately TIME isn't a constant either. We/you can (with enough money) conduct empirical experiments to demonstrate time shift with speed.

It's been done.

That is where common mistake lay (in such reasoning) because you do measure time using this derivatives variables... I leave it here for e-archaeologists to decide...