Truth always seems to be self contradictory and indiscriminate.Human mind can not accept self contradictions, but it is the way things are.
Story.
The law of gravity, contrary to what Marion Barry says, is — perhaps — the most indiscriminate of all the laws of nature.
“The laws in this city are clearly racist. All laws are racist. The law of gravity is racist.” –Marion Barry
The Universe is a lot like this. In the early stages, the Universe was filled with an incredibly large number of small galaxies and clusters, where a typical one contained maybe only a few million times the mass of our Sun. In other words, the vast majority of these baby galaxies were less than 0.1% the mass of our Milky Way!
But our Universe today has a huge population of heavyweights. In other words, where have the lions and dump trucks gone? Why are there so few left? And why are there so many Voltrons and Devastators out there?
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have measured the distance to the most remote galaxy so far, UDFy-38135539, existing when the Universe was only about 600 million years old (a redshift of 8.6). Image: M. Alvarez, R. Kaehler, and T. Abel
(PhysOrg.com) — A European team of astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has measured the distance to the most remote galaxy so far. By carefully analysing the very faint glow of the galaxy they have found that they are seeing it when the Universe was only about 600 million years old (a redshift of 8.6). These are the first confirmed observations of a galaxy whose light is clearing the opaque hydrogen fog that filled the cosmos at this early time. It has taken 13.1 billion years, travelling at 300,000 kilometres (186,000 miles) per second, for this smudge of infant light to arrive
The distance to faraway galaxies is measured by noting how rapidly they are moving away from our own. Because the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing pace, all widely dispersed galaxies retreat from each other at greater speeds the farther apart they are.
Scientists measure all this by noting a galaxy’s redshift, the extent to which the wavelengths of its light have been stretched toward the red end of the spectrum during its long travels across the cosmos.
The newfound galaxy has a redshift of at least 6.6, based on the Hubble imaging, and may be near 7.0 according to a less firm analysis of the Keck observations.
In all the messiness of life’s day-to-day, one tends to forget the majesty that is the universe on a grand scale. Let this stunning time-lapse of the Milky Way over Hawaii remind you of your insignificance. http://digg.com/d31Kdb0
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