Cosmology’s Biggest Conundrum Is A Clue, Not A Controversy

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Productive Things That Aren’t Studying

washing the dishes

making your bed

tidying your book/dvd shelf/shelves

cleaning the cupboard/wardrobe

reading

sleeping

writing a blog

planning your month/week/day

replying to messages or asks

responding to emails

sorting through letters/mail

clearing your email inbox

organising stationery

clean your sinks

clean your toilets

pet your pet

sort through old clothes

give to charity

go on a walk

go on a run

clean down any surfaces

work out

meal prep

get rid of empty shampoo bottles from the shower

clean out old food from the cupboard/fridge

empty out your school bag

call your parent

unfriend/unfollow people you no longer interact with

watch a TEDTalk

empty the bins/trash

clean the mirrors in your house

hug your pet

wash some clothes

buy any birthday cards/presents that you need to

reply to any old texts

make a tumblr post on productive things that aren’t studying

We Have Now Reached The Limits Of The Hubble Space Telescope

“Finally, there are the wavelength limits as well. Stars emits a wide variety of light, from the ultraviolet through the optical and into the infrared. It’s no coincidence that this is what Hubble was designed for: to look for light that’s of the same variety and wavelengths that we know stars emit.

But this, too, is fundamentally limiting. You see, as light travels through the Universe, the fabric of space itself is expanding. This causes the light, even if it’s emitted with intrinsically short wavelengths, to have its wavelength stretched by the expansion of space. By the time it arrives at our eyes, it’s redshifted by a particular factor that’s determined by the expansion rate of the Universe and the object’s distance from us.

Hubble’s wavelength range sets a fundamental limit to how far back we can see: to when the Universe is around 400 million years old, but no earlier.”

The Hubble Space Telescope, currently entering its 30th year of service, has literally revolutionized our view of the Universe. It’s shown us our faintest and most distant stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters of all. But as far back as it’s taken us, and as spectacular as what it’s revealed, there is much, much more Universe out there, and Hubble is at its limit.

Here’s how far we’ve come, with a look to how much farther we could yet go. It’s up to us to build the tools to take us there.

The First Galaxies: What We Know And What We Still Need To Learn

“As we look farther back in time, we find that younger galaxies formed stars at faster rates than galaxies do today. We can measure the star-formation rate, and find that at earlier and earlier times, it was more intense. But then we find it hits a peak when the Universe is about two billion years old. Go younger than that, and the rate goes down again.”

We’ve come incredibly far in our quest to learn how the Universe came to be the way it is today. We can see out in space for tens of billions of light years, to galaxies as they were when the Universe was only a few percent of its present age. We can see how galaxies evolve, merge and the stars inside change. And we can see to even before that, when no stars or galaxies existed at all. But how did we get from there to here? There are still plenty of gaps in the story. We’ve never seen the first stars or galaxies; we’ve never witnessed the start of cosmic reionization; we’ve never seen the star formation rate jump from zero to a real, finite number. Yet with James Webb and WFIRST on the horizon, these gaps in our knowledge may – if we’re lucky – all disappear.

Come get the story on what we know about the first galaxies, and what we hope and have left to still learn!

NanoCosmicFrequency

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