In a Galaxy far, far away

[skh1]

A new record!

A tiny galaxy from the depths of cosmic space and time has become the most distant astronomical object known. At a distance of 13.071 billion light-years, the galaxy is so remote that the light now reaching Earth left the starlit body less than 600 million years after the Big Bang.

Studying the galaxy may better illuminate the ancient era known as reionization, in which the universe’s hydrogen atoms were broken apart into their constituent electrons and protons, presumably by ultraviolet light emitted by the first stars in the cosmos. The time at which reionization — a gradual process — began marks the time that the first stars switched on, clearing the fog of neutral hydrogen atoms that had enveloped the cosmos. For UDFy-38135539 to be seen at all, reionization must have already begun in the galaxy’s immediate vicinity. Otherwise, the neutral hydrogen fog would have scattered the galaxy’s light, preventing it from reaching Earth.

The more distant a body, the greater its redshift. UDFy-38135539 has a redshift of 8.56, beating the previous distance holder, a powerful cosmic explosion known as a gamma-ray burst, by about 35 million light-years

(Teeny, tiny dot in the red circle)

[Frederich Barbarossa]

intriguing how the galaxy is always expanding. My science teacher always told me the universe is like a balloon. It will expand too much... :S and pop. Oh god hope not.