Tag Archive for 'Early Universe'

With the final observation of the distant galaxy cluster Abell 370 -- approximately 6 billion light-years away -- the Frontier Fields program came to an end. Abell 370 is one of the very first galaxy clusters in which astronomers observed the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, the warping of spacetime by the cluster’s gravitational field that distorts the light from galaxies lying far behind it. This manifests as arcs and streaks in the picture, which are the stretched images of background galaxies. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / HST Frontier Fields.

Abell 370: Hubble Team Releases New ‘Frontier Fields’ Image

May 4, 2017 by News Staff

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is one of the best ever views of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 370. The image (hi-res version)...

This is an artist impression of a progenitor of Milky Way-like galaxies in the early Universe with a background quasar shining through a ‘super halo’ of hydrogen gas surrounding the galaxy. New ALMA observations of two such galaxies reveal that these vast halos extend well beyond the galaxies’ dusty, star-forming disks. Image credit: A. Angelich / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

ALMA Spots Two Young Milky Way-Like Galaxies in Early Universe

Apr 3, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have observed a pair of massive, dusty galaxies seen when the Universe was only...

Schematic representation of rotating disc galaxies in the early Universe (right) and the present day (left). New VLT observations suggest that such massive star-forming disc galaxies in the early Universe were less influenced by dark matter (shown in red), as it was less concentrated. As a result the outer parts of distant galaxies rotate more slowly than comparable regions of galaxies in the local Universe. Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada.

Universe’s Early Galaxies Were Less Influenced by Dark Matter

Mar 15, 2017 by News Staff

New observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) indicate that massive, star-forming galaxies during the peak epoch of galaxy formation, 10 billion...

The massive black hole shown at left in this drawing is able to rapidly grow as intense radiation from a galaxy nearby shuts down star formation in its host galaxy. Image credit: John Wise, Georgia Tech.

How Universe’s First Supermassive Black Holes Were Born

Mar 13, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of astrophysicists from the United States, Ireland and Finland has come up with the formula for the formation of the first supermassive...

This artist’s impression shows what the galaxy A2744_YD4 might look like. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

ALMA Detects Vast Amounts of Interstellar Dust, Oxygen in Very Young, Distant Galaxy

Mar 9, 2017 by News Staff

New observations using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have demonstrated that A2744_YD4 — the youngest and most remote galaxy...

Astronomers combined data from ALMA’s 7- and 12-m antennas to produce the sharpest possible image of RX J1347.5–1145, the center of which shows up here in the dark ‘hole’ in the ALMA observations. The energy distribution of the CMB photons shifts and appears as a temperature decrease at the wavelength observed by ALMA, hence a dark patch is observed in this image at the location of the cluster. The optical image of RX J1347.5–1145 was taken with Hubble. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / T. Kitayama, Toho University / ALMA.

Astronomers Use ALMA to Hunt for Universe’s Oldest Light

Feb 20, 2017 by News Staff

This image shows the first measurements of the so-called Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect (SZE) from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. Astronomers...

According to Antusch et al, oscillons produced a characteristic peak in the otherwise broad spectrum of gravitational waves. Image credit: University of Basel.

Oscillons, Gravitational Wave Factories in Very Early Universe

Feb 15, 2017 by News Staff

A team of theoretical physicists at the University of Basel, Switzerland, has found that in the very early Universe, so-called oscillons — strong...

Hubble Frontier Fields view of a distant galaxy cluster. Image credit: NASA / ESA / HST Frontier Fields Team / STScI.

First Observational Evidence of Holographic Universe?

Jan 30, 2017 by News Staff

A ground-breaking study released in the journal Physical Review Letters (arXiv.org version) offers what its authors call ‘the first observational evidence...

This artist’s impression shows a Milky Way-type galaxy, surrounded by a large halo of blue, faint light, made of Lyman-alpha photons. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO.

Photons Struggle to Escape Early Milky Way-Type Galaxies

Jan 11, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has discovered enormous halos of blue, faint light — made of so-called Lyman-alpha photons — around early...

The distorted galaxy in the simulation (main image) results from a collision and merger between two galaxies. Astronomers think such a merger could be the reason why SPT0346-52 is having such a boom of stellar construction. Once the two galaxies collide, gas near the center of the merged galaxy (shown as the bright region in the center of the simulation) is compressed, producing a burst of new stars. The composite inset shows X-ray data from Chandra (blue), short wavelength infrared data from Hubble (green), infrared light from Spitzer (red) at longer wavelengths, and infrared data from ALMA (magenta) at even longer wavelengths. There is no blue at the center of the image, showing that Chandra did not detect any X-rays that could have signaled the presence of a growing black hole. Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / University of Florida / J. Ma et al; optical – NASA / STScI; infrared – NASA / JPL-Caltech; radio – ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / ALMA; simulation - Simons Foundation / Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation / Flatiron Institute / Caltech / C. Hayward & P. Hopkins.

Astronomers Find Hyper-Starburst Galaxy 12.7 Billion Light-Years Away

Dec 9, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers have used CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to show that a recently-discovered lensed...

Universe is Expanding Uniformly, Scientists Say

Sep 23, 2016 by News Staff

The Universe is not spinning or stretched in any particular direction, according to a team of researchers from University College London and Imperial College...

A trove of galaxies, rich in carbon monoxide (indicating star-forming potential) were imaged by ALMA (orange) in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The blue features are galaxies imaged by Hubble. Image credit: B. Saxton / NRAO / AUI / NSF / ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NASA / ESA / Hubble.

ALMA Probes Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Sep 22, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array have explored the same corner of the early Universe first revealed in the iconic image...

Dr. Vaccaro is challenging the conventional view of space and time to show how the world advances through time. Image credit: Geralt.

Novel Theory on Moving Through Time

Aug 18, 2016 by News Staff

A physicist at Griffith University in Australia has solved an anomaly of conventional physics and shown that a mysterious effect called ‘T violation’...

$This is one slice through the map of the large-scale structure of the Universe from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. Each dot in this picture indicates the position of a galaxy 6 billion years into the past. The image covers about 1/20th of the sky, a slice of the Universe 6 billion light-years wide, 4.5 billion light-years high, and 500 million light-years thick. Color indicates distance from Earth, ranging from yellow on the near side of the slice to purple on the far side. Galaxies are highly clustered, revealing superclusters and voids whose presence is seeded in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. This image contains 48,741 galaxies, about 3% of the full survey dataset. Grey patches are small regions without survey data. Image credit: Daniel Eisenstein / SDSS-III Collaboration.$