Summary:
The earliest known quasar was discovered earlier this year by astronomers in New Mexico. This exciting discovery gives us a tantalising glimpse into the cosmic dark age, the first 600 million years after the big bang.
Transcript:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good.
Pauline Newman: There was great excitement when the quasar was discovered earlier this year with an optical telescope in New Mexico. A faint point of light so far away that it had to come from an immensely powerful source. When radio astronomers turned their telescopes to look, they were stunned. Pier Cox from the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Orsay, France is one of an international team of astronomers who’ve recently published their findings in the journal Nature.
Pierre Cox: We discovered something which I think is extraordinary you cannot see optically: a massive reservoir of molecular gas which is making up the galaxy which is accompanying the quasar which is the farthest away quasar which is actually known.
Fabian Walter: That’s really truly amazing, I mean, it’s only with very sensitive telescopes that we can actually pick up radiation from an object that is that far away.
Pauline Newman: Fabian Walter of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, New Mexico.
Fabian Walter: That light from the quasar actually travelled 13 billion years to reach us here on earth. We see the quasar when the universe was only one sixteenth of today’s age. So the universe is now about 14 billion years old and we see the quasar of around 800 million years after the Big Bang.
Pauline Newman: The Big Bang that started the universe off generated such intense heat that molecules or indeed ordinary atoms could not exist.
Fabian Walter: It actually took about 300 thousand years before the universe cooled down and actually formed atoms. And really at the point the universe was dark, there was nothing, just neutral atoms flying around basically.
Pauline Newman: This is what astronomers call the Dark Age, dark because the stars that light up space had not yet been made, and dark because we know so little about this time. David Blair is a cosmologist in Perth who’s been following the story.
David Blair: The stunning discovery now is that those Dark Ages came to an end rather rapidly and suddenly huge massive starts started to form, and very quickly giant Black Holes formed and we see today those first quasars.
Pauline Newman: The quasar the astronomers are so excited about now was powered by a Black Hole in its centre at least a billion times more massive than our sun. Sucking in matter from the surrounding galaxy, the quasar produced intense radiation and became unimaginably bright. Fabian Walter.
Fabian Walter: We believe that the quasar that we were looking at is one of these first luminous sources. It tells us many things really. First of all it’s very interesting that we see the carbon monoxide gas, that implies that there must be carbon and oxygen otherwise you could form carbon monoxide. And carbon and oxygen are elements that have to be produced in stars, so that the mere fact that we see carbon monoxide at these early times tells us that there must have been a generation of stars actually producing that gas, prove that actually star formation is going on that far back in the history of the universe.
Pauline Newman: So this gas is gas from the very first stars in the universe.
Pierre Cox: Certainly it is, yeah.
Pauline Newman: Pierre Cox.
Pierre Cox: Those first generations of stars were made up of stars of many hundred solar masses. Every five hours one star like the sun is formed, in existence. For a year it’s about a thousand or even more stars like the sun which are formed, many thousand times more than what’s known locally in the universe. They had a very short lifetime and probably ended up in very spectacular explosions. We are now living in a much quieter universe and I think that’s lucky for us.
Pauline Newman: It’s an amazing amount of information gleaned in just the last few months from looking at this most distance and earlier quasar that burst into life 13 billion years ago.
Pierre Cox: What is remarkable with this particular object is that it’s the first one which is really located at the end of the Dark Age of the universe, so it is really opening a completely new chapter in astrophysics.
Pure Darkness....have you ever felt it? Pure Darkness is hard to understand since not meany people have felt it. Pure Darkkness is a tipe of darkness that takes the life out of you. You are sincles. I am sorry but it is true, darkeness and light are one of the same.
Darkness is a measure of light(photons) there is no pure darkness or darkness entity(awareness), unless when you say darkness you are talking about evil in which case thats just symantics.for instance if a tree falls in the forest and noone is around, it doees not make a sound. Sound does not exist till it is heard.
People who think that darkness is a physical force eg."Darkness punched me." You are idiots. People who believe that darkness was before the universe, again idiots. Before there was light there was no darkness, because darkness is a word to describe a measure of photons.
Necron, you are at nut job, and it is your right to be one but don't try to spread your idiocy where it isn't wanted. Age does not amount to wisdom. You could be reincartnated 1000000 times and if you refuse to learn, than you'll still be a F#$Khead.
Mortal kind exists in 4 dimension anything outside of those dimensions we cannot percieve, see, hear or even imagine.
But we gone off topic. Darkness has no physical existance you cannot have a universe without light, but you can have one with darkness.
So long as there is one candle burning the whole universe will have light, but if that candle burns out it won't have darkness.
PS. The big bang was not matter or anit-matter, it was energy. Supposedly.
I have had time to ponder and I have decided that my words before were unjust, I apologize to those I have insulted by calling them idiots or nutjobs or any other names. I wrote that when I was frustrated and I hope that you will forgive me for foolish words spoken in anger. I am human enough that I too Make mistakes.
In Summary I appologize for my previous post, it did not help sway any to my way of thinking. I see now that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I will endevour to be more accepting of others opinions.
You know.. you all saying about knowing the "darkness" and having some kinda "powers"... if i could go slap you all right now i would X.x
I will say this once again like in sooo many other posts, you are HUMAN and you are NOT something more special and advanced than anyone else.. not even in your dreams can you become something more than what you are :P
"Pure Darkness....have you ever felt it? Pure Darkness is hard to understand since not meany people have felt it. Pure Darkkness is a tipe of darkness that takes the life out of you. You are sincles. I am sorry but it is true, darkeness and light are one of the same."
Wasted, that's one of the most ridiculous things I've seen you post yet. 'Pure Darkness' would be an area in which 0 light rays hit. That means that what you would see is exactly the same as what you would see if you closed your eyes.
Now, not getting sunlight for a period of time can get you sick. The human body does need a certain amount of sun to stay healthy, but humans will not die without it. For some it's kinda the other way around, those people who are allergic to UV rays could die if they DO get it.
And I'm afraid your spys are wrong, Wasted. My name is not 'Sincles'. lol :)
OK ENOUGH From all OF You! We have how many pages of people arguing. Yes some of it is discussion. But some of it is just down right arguing.Don't you boys have better things to do?
Wasted your wrong my love.But we will take that discussion off forums where it belongs.
