Posted on 04/09/2015 6:07:43 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The further [sic] astronomers look into the universe, the longer into the past they can see. As light travels at a finite speed (the speed of light), studying a galaxy 1 billion light-years away corresponds to a time when the universe was 1 billion years younger than it is now. So by surveying Milky Way-like galaxies at different distances from us, we can see how our galaxy may have looked in the past.
And by doing this, astronomers have created a timeline and identified when the Milky Way likely had the most intense period of stellar birth.
“This study allows us to see what the Milky Way may have looked like in the past,” said Casey Papovich, of Texas A&M University in College Station, lead author of the study published in the April 9 edition of The Astrophysical Journal. “It shows that these galaxies underwent a big change in the mass of its stars over the past 10 billion years, bulking up by a factor of 10, which confirms theories about their growth. And most of that stellar-mass growth happened within the first 5 billion years of their birth.”
Our sun, however, only started to form about 5 billion years ago, meaning that our star formed when the galaxy was well past its frenzied star birth boom of 10 billion years ago.
But this certainly was no bad thing and may even be a key factor as to why our star system has a rich variety of planets and is probably why the chemistry for life is here in abundance.
...Supernovae, combined with other energetic stellar events, formed the elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, elements that are essential for the formation of metal rich stars and, by extension, the rocky worlds that orbit them.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
There is absolute age and “perceived age.” They can be one and the same or different. I say they are the same. But which is which?
Go to employment interviews and the difference will become apparent.
So before the Sun formed was it the Skim Milky Way?
“These galaxies underwent a big change in mass”
Don’t we all when we get older.
Good one!
Soon we will be the 2% Milky Way.
“Our Sun was Late to the Milky Way’s Baby Boom Party”
If it had formed at the beginning, we would all have been dead for 5 billion years.
Perception is everything, but it is 96% wrong.
“It shows that these galaxies underwent a big change in the mass of its stars over the past 10 billion years, bulking up by a factor of 10, which confirms theories about their growth.”
Steroids.
<** Snickers **>
Oh. Don’t do that.
Now he’ll think he’s in for a Payday.
Does that mean we're a Millennial solar system?
If so, it would explain a lot more than our cosmological situation.
Annnnnd this thread is now over. ;)
The Klingon home world does not have the same mineral rich world we have because their sun is older. Makes them mad and war like.....
Or wait in the line in front of the Wal-Mart service desk.
We’d all look like Kieth Richards?
Planet Earth is just starting to provide material to the galactic reality show.
Actually, if our Solar System had formed at the beginning of the “birth” of our Galaxy, we would never have existed.
Consider that our Galaxy began as primarily Hydrogen and Helium. Stars born from this “starter material”, specifically exceptionally large, short life stars, expired and expelled elements (formed from the short lifespan and death of these “progenitor” stars) across the galaxy that in turn were available when “young” stars, such as our sun, were “born”, which had these heavier elements to draw from when our Solar System was “created”.
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