Airbrush

I found a 2-12-08 story with a name for that very early galaxy, A1689-zD1, that is magnified ten times by the gravitational lensing of Abell 1689. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/news/Spitzer20080212.html The light originated from A1689-zD1 about 700 Million years after the Big Bang and is now about 12.8 Billion years old. It is among the first galaxies to form after the Dark Ages, which lasted from about 400,000 years until about one Billion years after the Big Bang. I didn't see any redshift number, but it must be the one Martin introduced here with a redshift of ~7.6 and the galaxy is now almost 30 Billion LY from us. How much further is the CMB if it has a redshift of 1090, which is 136 times higher redshifted than z = 8?

Interesting news Martin. From reading the article I am only able to gather that it has a redshift (z) of ~7.6, plus or minus 0.4. Does it say how old the light is? Anyone want to venture an estimate of its' current distance from us? Why don't they give these astonishing objects on the edge of our visual horizon names? What is the highest redshift possible for an object to still be visible?

OK, sorry to be so critical. In the hypothetical sense, she would need to send a balloon up into the stratosphere with a device that will open a trap at a certain height, and stay open long enough for the sample, then close tightly. Then it should release enough helium after the sample trap shuts so it will come down gently. You may need to retreive it from the middle of an ocean, or in very remote wilderness, or in the middle of a foreign country, all depending upon many variables. It should have a GPS tracking device so you can travel half-way around the world to retrieve it. And don't forget to have a sign on it (in every conceivable language) for a substantial reward for its' safe recovery. A better way is hire a plane that can take the device, attached to the outside of the plane, that high. That will solve the problems encountered with a balloon. Wiki gave stratosphere heights starting at 10 km (6 miles or over 32,000 feet) and up to 50 km (31 miles or ~164,000 feet).

Well Mr. Alien, I can go along with the hypothetical thing. You probably know a lot more about this stuff than I do. But I beat you with common sense. She posted that a week ago and never returned, and obviously doesn't take it seriously. She is probably in high school.

One more thing, what does her question have to do with Astronomy and Cosmology? Her post should have been moved to a relevant discussion area.

I don't see anything practical about what she is trying to do. She will most likely just get into trouble or waste a lot of time and money. How about studying something more accessible? Nobody asked Christiana what her educational level is or what her credentials are. Let's get some context before encouraging her. That was her first post here, and we don't know anything about why she wants to do something so difficult. Hey Christiana, how old are you? What experience do you have?

Thanks for your help NowThat. The math I had trouble with was exactly your illustration and I remember discussing exactly this with you on Historychannel.com. I finally figured out where you got 29.7 Gly. Gly is new terminology to me. "Gly" must mean giga light years. So, for us newbies, when reading about objects that are on the edge of our visual horizon, about redshifts of 6.5 or higher, a good rule of thumb is take the time the light left in the past and multiply it by 2.3. 13 billion years ago X 2.3 = 30 Billion light years away NOW (approx). That discovery is over 4 years old, so I believe we may not ever find anything much further away than that. Right?

I am designing a spaceship to take a few friends with me to Mars, can someone help me out please? Leave it to NASA, the pros and the corporations. Because of all the difficulties listed above, try something easy instead.

The 2004 story (see below) reported a gravitationally lensed galaxy, behind a cluster called Abell 2218, that has a record-breaking redshift of 7.0. “We are confident it is the most distant known object,” California Institute of Technology astronomer Richard Ellis said of the galaxy, which lies roughly 13 billion light-years from Earth. Put another way, the light traveled for 13 billion years to reach Earth." The error in his report states it IS roughly 13 Billion LY from Earth, but it is really light that left it about 13 Billion years AGO. It is much further away now. Is there a general rule-of-thumb for converting 13 Billion years AGO to a current distance from Earth? Could we just double 13 Billion and call it about 26 Billion LY away, since it must be receding at nearly light speed? I have seen formulas for computing current distances, but the math is beyond me. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4274187/

The ether, which is an intuitive construct, may just be too subtle to be detected, like the program for existence. I like that stuff about geometry existing without being the geometry of anything. Maybe Geometry is what people really mean by "God" (without knowing it).

I was trying to visualize the most massive known object in the universe, OJ-287, the 18 Billion solar mass supermassive blackhole (in binary with a 100 Million solar mass SBH) which has an accretion disk with a diameter of 0.19 light weeks. If superimposed over our solar system, with the singularity at the center of our sun, the event horizon would extend to within the orbit of Mercury by 3 million miles, at a radius of 33 Million miles, and the outer edge of the accretion disk would extend only one tenth the distance to the Oort cloud, which is at 50,000 au. Out to what radius would the "ring zone" of the energetic reaction extend? How thick would the ring be? What would be the diameter of the ring of energetic reaction?

Just because matter has anti-matter, does not mean that time has anti-time. Time is an artificial measuring device like length. Using this logic there cannot be anti-time just like there cannot be anti-length. Distance measures are always positive.

Thanks for your help Martin. I just discovered info about OJ-287. I assume the supermassive black holes (SBH), that are probably at the center of quasars, are on the order of Billions of solar masses. We already know that the extreme yet compact brightness of a quasar is not from the relativistic jets. If we were looking down a polar jet, then what we are looking at is called a blazar. But most quasars are not blazars, right? So the extreme brightness of a quasar does not come from the jets, but must be the result of massive amounts of gas and dust that are streaming into the SBH on the inner edge of the accretion disc. I just discovered this article (below) about a binary SBH system, which is called OJ-287 over 3 Billion LY away, with a central black hole of 18 Billion solar masses (the largest known). It has a smaller SBH of "only" 100 Million solar masses in a 12-year orbit around it. They estimated the outer edge of the accretion disk of the bigger one as only about 10 light weeks in diameter. Ten light weeks is about 0.19 light years, or over 1.1 Trillion miles if my math is correct (60 x 60 x 24 x 70days x 186,000mi/sec = 1.116 Trillion miles). Next I need to calculate the diameter of the event horizon for OJ-287. Using the data that Martin got from wikipedia, the Schwarzenegger (snicker, snicker, ok...."Schwarzschild") radius of an 18-Billion-solar-mass black hole is about 54 Billion meters or 54 Million kilometers or 33.5 Million miles, or about a third the distance from the earth to the sun. Now I need some time to groke this in fullness. http://www.caha.es/18-billions-of-suns-support-einstein.html

After some research into quasars I still cannot find answers to my questions about the mechanics of a quasar. How large are quasars? I assume the central supermassive black hole (SBH) that is probably at the center is on the order of Billions of solar masses. We already know that the extreme yet compact brightness of a quasar is not from the relativistic jets. If we were looking down a polar jet, then what we are looking at is called a blazar. But most quasars are not blazars, right? So the extreme brightness of a quasar does not come from the jets, but must be the result of massive amounts of gas and dust that are streaming into the SBH on the inner edge of the accretion disc. How can a quasar be the size of our solar system, if the diameter of the event horizon of a Billion-solar-mass black hole is probably not nearly as large as our solar system? What is the Swartzchild Radius of a Billion-solar-mass black hole?

Space-time cannot exist without matter. Matter did not exist until the big bang, unless the big bang happened within an already existing universe, in which case the big bang erased a previous universe and introduced another.

Diversified sources of energy is the solution. The US and China will be tempted to keep using coal, since both countries have a large cheap coal supply. Homes, cars, and industries could be made much more energy efficient. Water should be heated by pipes on the roofs of houses, better insulation, and solar cells on roofs, stuff like that. I would like to see more designs for tidal and ocean wave generation of power. Someone above said that nuclear FISSION is an expensive energy source, I would think nuclear FUSSION would be way more expensive, but cleaner. I'm waiting for the price to come down so everyone can have their own nuclear FUSSION reactor in their back yard.

That is fascinating! So that means that about a Billion years ago the surface of the ocean was probably not a wild boiling cauldron of constant half-mile high mega-tsunamics crashing onto all the earth's coastline. By a Billion years ago the oceans had settled down to be rather sedate. The moon's orbit around the earth was (about what?) less than 2 orbits in a 24-hour period? And tides were only a few times higher than they are today? As the other poster noted that would be quite a sight to see the very early earth of boiling molten rock tsunamics several miles high, caused by intense tidal action, along with the bombardment of meteors and comets, as a constant condition for millions of years! Such extreme conditions are beyond imagining.

That is interesting info Klaynos. Then quasars may have the huge jets but they are so far away we can only see a point source. Is something going on with quasars that makes them so bright and appear "quasi-stellar" coming from a region as small as light weeks across? Or is that an illusion? Are quasars seen along a jet pointed directly at earth, like a gamma ray burst? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedHere is what I wiki'ed on "Rayleigh criterion": "The resolving power of a lens is ultimately limited by diffraction (see Point Spread Function, Airy disc). The lens' aperture is analogous to a two-dimensional version of the single-slit experiment. Light passing through the lens interferes with itself creating a ring-shaped diffraction pattern, known as the Airy pattern, if the phase of the transmitted light is taken to be spherical over the exit aperture. The result is a blurring of the image. An empirical diffraction limit is given by the Rayleigh criterion invented by Lord Rayleigh" So quasars may in reality have the shape of an active galaxy, but since it is so far away the jets blur into a spherical shape? But how does that translate to a region of brightness measured at only "solar system sized" or light weeks across because variations occur in weeks? Also the jets are exceptionally energetic and bright. But isn't there something extraordinary happening on the inner edge of the accretion disk?

I'm glad to hear you say that DH. Then about a Billion years ago huge tsunamis hundreds of meters high would be the ocean norm. Tidal pools, with mild, nutrient-rich conditions would form all around the limits of tidal advance.

That is great material iNow, thanks for that. Primordial, the black hole can spin in its' own space-time, and what we see is only our impression.

I don't mean to sound argumentative, and I do appreciate the efforts you have made to explain this point. It is still beyond me. Then what you are saying is that suppose we launch a 100 kgm rocket towards a solar mass black hole. Suppose also that the rocket turns around and attempts to slow down its approach so we can get a better view of what happens. As it gets closer the BH gravity will overcome the rocket and drag it into oblivion very quickly. As the rocket is crushed and spaggetified the remaining flash will linger outside the EH forever? Then someday when we discover such a nearby BH and we can get a close enough view of it, we should see ghostly images all around it of matter that fell into it during its existence?

That is interesting info Mokele. That was a question that has bothered me a long time. The possibility of life originating around geo-thermal vents is also interesting. I always supposed the deep ocean conditions were too extreme for life to originate, and that life had to originate in very favorable mild conditions. Then it could migrate and adapt to extreme conditions. But deep ocean vents may be even more stable and not upset by drastic changes on the surface.

Then such frozen images should accumulate over time, and we would be able to see many accumulated frozen images of objects that HAD entered the black hole over Billions of years (or as long as it has existed). Because scientists do not report these frozen red-shifted images clustered around black holes is why I say I find that hard to believe. But you may be right, and we just have not identified these YET. Or have they seen such things?

I thought that gravity is more like a warping of space than a particle that leaves the massive object and travels outward. Have they even proven that gravitons exist? Gravitons are supposed to be without mass. I don't know, maybe you are on to something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitons

I tried to find a reference for you, but failed. It is common knowledge the moon is moving away from the earth an inch or two per year. A Billion years ago it was much closer. There was a History Channel program which stated ancient tides were a THOUSAND times greater than they are now, and that the moon was orbiting the earth much faster and closer than it is today. Life probably did not originate around deep-sea vents, but rather originated in much milder, nutrient rich tidal pools, then some species migrated to the deep-sea vents to evolve.