New Theory on Big Bang

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20020109/sc/from_dark_to_light_4.html

Science - Associated Press

Wednesday January 9 3:40 AM ET
New Theory on Big Bang
Photos

By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - An outburst of star formation ended a half billion years
of utter darkness following the Big Bang, the theoretical start of the
universe, according to a study that challenges old ideas about the birth of
the first stars.

An analysis of very faint galaxies in the deepest view of the universe ever
captured by a telescope suggests there was an eruption of stars that burst
to life and pierced the blackness very early in the 15 billion-year history
of the universe.

The study, by Kenneth M. Lanzetta of the State University of New York at
Stony Brook, challenges the long held belief that star formation started
slowly after the Big Bang and didn't peak until some 5 billion years later.

``Star formation took place early and very rapidly,'' Lanzetta said Tuesday
at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration news conference. ``Star
formation was 10 times higher in the distant early universe than it is
today.''

Lanzetta's conclusions are based on an analysis of what is called a deep
field study by the Hubble Space Telescope (news - web sites). To capture the
faintest and most distant images possible, the Hubble focused on an ordinary
bit of sky for more than 14 days, taking a picture of every object within a
small, deep slice of the heavens. The resulting images are faint, fuzzy bits
of light from galaxies near and far, including some more than 14 billion
light-years away, said Lanzetta.

The surprise was that the farther back the telescope looked, the greater the
star-forming activity was.

``Star formation continued to increase to the very earliest point that we
could see,'' said Lanzetta. ``We are seeing close to the first burst of star
formation.''

Bruce Margon of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said
Lanzetta's conclusions are a ``surprising result'' that will need to be
confirmed by other studies.

``This suggests that the great burst of star formation was at the beginning
of the universe,'' said Margon, noting that, in effect: ``The finale came
first.''

``If this can be verified, it will dramatically change our understanding of
the universe,'' said Anne Kinney, director of the astronomy and physics
division at NASA (news - web sites).

In his study, Lanzetta examined light captured in the Hubble deep field
images, using up to 12 different light filters to separate the colors. The
intensity of red was used to establish the distance to each point of light.
The distances were then used to create a three-dimensional perspective of
the 5,000 galaxies in the Hubble picture.

Lanzetta also used images of nearby star fields as a yardstick for stellar
density and intensity to conclude that about 90 percent of the light in the
very early universe was not detected by the Hubble. When this missing light
was factored into the three-dimensional perspective, it showed that the peak
of star formation came just 500 million years after the Big Bang and has
been declining since.

Current star formation, he said, ``is just a trickle'' of that early burst
of stellar birth.

Lisa Storrie-Lombardi, a California Institute of Technology astronomer, said
that the colors of the galaxies in the Hubble deep field images ``are a very
good indication of their distance.''

Current theory suggests that about 15 billion years ago, an infinitely dense
single point exploded - the Big Bang - creating space, time, matter and
extreme heat. As the universe cooled, light elements, such as hydrogen and
helium, formed. Later, some areas became more dense with elements than
others, forming gravitational centers that attracted more and more matter.
Eventually, celestial bodies became dense enough to start nuclear fires,
setting the heavens aglow. These were newborn stars.

Storrie-Lombardi said that current instruments and space telescopes now
being planned could eventually, perhaps, see into the Dark Era, the time
before there were stars.

``We are getting close to the epoch where we can not see at all,'' she said.

-

On the Net:

Hubble images: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2002/02

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I love the way this reminds me of musical lattice diagrams! :)

"Music of the spheres", indeed!

http://universe.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/universe.html

>> After the big bang and its afterglow, the Universe entered
>> into the so-called "dark ages" when nothing shined. Hydrogen
>> gas had yet to collapse in great balls and form stars.
>> Structure takes time, as you can imagine. The popular "cold
>> dark matter" theory predicts that exotic dark matter (of a
>> yet unknown and undetectable nature) and a little bit of
>> normal matter clumped together to form long filaments, which
>> were scattered across the Universe creating a web. This was
>> the very first structure. The filaments were a result of
>> millions of years of gravity carving out denser regions of
>> space, leaving voids in its wake. Hydrogen was the predominant
>> gas along these filaments. Hundreds of millions of years went
>> by. Pockets of hydrogen condensed, and galaxies started
>> forming along the filaments like beads on a string. Stars
>> formed along with galaxies. Where filaments intersected,
>> galaxy clusters arose.

love / peace / harmony ...

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"

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