Galaxies formed sooner after Big Bang than thought
12 April 2011 Full Article Here:-
AFP – Astronomers said on Tuesday they believed the first galaxies formed just 200 million years after the Big Bang, a finding that challenges assumptions of how the Universe grew from infancy into childhood.
Their evidence comes from a remote galaxy whose glimmer of light was teased open to reveal the presence of truly ancient stars.
“We have discovered a distant galaxy that began forming stars just 200 million years after the Big Bang,” said lead author Johan Richard, an astrophysicist at the Lyon Observatory, southeastern France.
“This challenges theories of how soon galaxies formed and evolved in the first years of the Universe. It could even help solve the mystery of how the hydrogen fog that filled the early Universe was cleared.”
The oldest galaxy previously detected and confirmed was created some 480 million years after the Big Bang.
To all appearances, the new finding could lay a claim on being the record-beater.
But no such claims are being made because the discovery was made indirectly, rather than through direct observation, Richard told AFP.
A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the galaxy cluster CL1358+62 released in 1997 has uncovered a gravitationally-lensed image of a more distant galaxy located far beyond the cluster. Astronomers said on Tuesday they believed the first galaxies formed just 200 million years after the Big Bang, a finding that challenges assumptions of how the Universe grew from infancy into childhood.
