Posted on 03/04/2005 7:30:56 AM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
Combining observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, astronomers have discovered the most distant, very massive structure in the Universe known so far. It is a remote cluster of galaxies that is found to weigh as much as several thousand galaxies like our own Milky Way and is located no less than 9,000 million light-years away.
The VLT images reveal that it contains reddish and elliptical, i.e. old, galaxies. Interestingly, the cluster itself appears to be in a very advanced state of development. It must therefore have formed when the Universe was less than one third of its present age.
The discovery of such a complex and mature structure so early in the history of the Universe is highly surprising. Indeed, until recently it would even have been deemed impossible.
[snip]
"We are quite surprised to see that a fully-fledged structure like this could exist at such an early epoch," says Christopher Mullis. "We see an entire network of stars and galaxies in place, just a few thousand million years after the Big Bang".
"We seem to have underestimated how quickly the early Universe matured into its present-day state," adds Piero Rosati of ESO, another member of the team. "The Universe did grow up fast!"
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Is this sort of related to Mandlebrot sets?
Ping
Interesting! I will bookmark.
... twenty creationists show up to tell us it's all a figment of our imagination in 3, 2, 1...
Either that, or some of your core premises could be wrong.
I've been looking for a place to send liberals.
You think this discovery is threatening to Creationists? Seems to me it fits in well with Intelligent Design.
Not all creationists are literalists, you know. Many - if not most - interpret six days to be six phases of creation. Few assume that one day for us is one day for God.
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
Design, Robert Frost
I thought this was another Denise Richards thread.
Neither do I my friend, neither do I.
Intelligent design, yes. A fundamentalist view of creation? Probably not.
intelligent design indications yet again.
There's a heavenly body for you.
What did one astrophysicist say to another astrophysicist on spotting a heavenly body?
Hubble, Hubble!
"What did one astrophysicist say to another astrophysicist on spotting a heavenly body?
Hubble, Hubble!"
You should be struck.
::groan::
Me too. It seems more threatening to scientists who deny Intelligent Design. Why is it that they are always discovering new things that contradict what they were always so sure about just a few years earlier?
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