I still find news like this virtually incomprehensible! It apparently means that the Big Bang probably occurred 600 million years earlier than previously thought.When the galaxy's light protons first started their journey to Earth, the universe was only 4% of its age
13.1 billion years, that is a long time ago. I remember my big bang. I think I was around 16. Heck, that almost seems to be about the same length of time.fountainhall wrote:Scientists have found yet another new galaxy, this one measured at 13.1 billion (yes, that's billion) light years away -
I still find news like this virtually incomprehensible! It apparently means that the Big Bang probably occurred 600 million years earlier than previously thought.When the galaxy's light protons first started their journey to Earth, the universe was only 4% of its age
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20101021/twl ... d0ae9.html
There's plenty I understand as far as realizing what they're talking about, but it goes far beyond my scope to really grasp it. Exploding stars that release in less than a second hundreds of thousands times more energy than the sun has released in its entire existence. Light from sources so far away that it takes nearly three times the age of the earth itself for the light to travel here. The concept of time beginning with the Big Bang and there was no such thing as 5 minutes before the Big Bang. Temperatures in the millions of degrees. Black holes. Galaxies colliding, but the stars are so distant from each other that there is almost no way any of them would actually crash into each other. It all boggles my mind, that's for sure.RichLB wrote:Now THAT's something that is even more mind boggling.
13.1 billion years is the same as 13.1 billion light years. Or Khortose edit his post to correct it?lvdkeyes wrote:Not 13.1 billion years, but 13.1 billion LIGHT years. Considering the speed at which light travels, that is considerably more than 13.1 years.
It's not. A year is a unit of time, a light year is a unit of length (the distance light travels in a year).windwalker wrote:13.1 billion years is the same as 13.1 billion light years.
Wikipedia:
A light-year, also light year or lightyear, (symbol:ly) is a unit of length, equal to just under 10 trillion kilometres (1016 metres, 10 petametres or 6 trillion miles). As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year.
One light-year is equal to:
exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (about 9.5 Pm)
about 5,878,625,373,183.608 miles (about 6 trillion miles)
about 63,241.1 astronomical units
about 0.306601 parsecs
exactly 31,557,600 light-seconds
Windwalker, I know---exactly the same. You want to chide lvdkeyes for the mistake not me. Neither he or Christianpfc get the picture, and I am not going to the effort to explain it to them as it is not that important to me to make them understand.windwalker wrote:13.1 billion years is the same as 13.1 billion light years. Or Khortose edit his post to correct it?lvdkeyes wrote:Not 13.1 billion years, but 13.1 billion LIGHT years. Considering the speed at which light travels, that is considerably more than 13.1 years.
Sorry Khortose, I was not chiding you! I was only trying to correct an observation by lvdkeyes. In posting a reply I thought you may, at first, dropped "billion"and later corrected it. But that was not the case. I really am not quite sure what lvdkeyes was objecting to. Will wait for his explanation.Khortose wrote:Windwalker, I know---exactly the same.