Tuesday, February 17, 2004

pictures from the edge

The Hubble has looked almost all the way across the known universe (and therefore almost all the way back in time, according to current theories) to image the farthest known object from Earth. Gravitational lensing helped magnify the faint galaxy, which is 50 times smaller than our own, and believed to be seen as it was when the universe was just 750 million years old (our universe is currently believed to be 13.7 billion years old)... here is a good demonstration to show you how that works. Enjoy the discoveries while you can - Hubble's days are numbered.

Personally, I'd like to see more research done in this area... we know so little about our universe, and it's only been in my lifetime that we've had the ability to get more useful information. With more data, we can speed up the process of refining our theories, some of which will most assuredly be thrown out eventually, although we (like every generation) believe we have it all figured out already.