Astronomers have found a galaxy that's 13.2 billion years old. I
wonder what the YECs will have to say about that?

Astronomers have found a galaxy that's 13.2 billion years old. I wonder
what the YECs will have to say about that?

http://tinyurl.com/3aykx

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Astronomers Discover Most Distant Galaxy

Mon Mar 1, 1:52 PM ET

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GENEVA (Reuters) - A team of Swiss and French astronomers said on Monday
they had found the most distant galaxy yet, a cluster of stars from the
dawn of the universe, 13.2 billion light years away from earth.

The new images reveal a galaxy at the point when the universe was only
470 million years old and will help scientists explore how it took
shape. Up to now, the oldest galactic images were believed to be from
750 million years after the big bang.

"What we are observing here are the very first moments of the universe,"
astronomer Daniel Schaerer of the University of Geneva, co-leader of the
project, told Reuters by telephone.

The discovery was made using the ground-based telescope in Chile
operated by the European Southern Observatory, the 10-member state
organization for astronomical research based near Munich, Germany.

The pictures of galaxy Abell 1835 IR1916 confirmed scientists' views on
how the universe appeared shortly after the first light sources began to
pierce the cosmic fog that followed the big bang, and ended what
astronomers dub the dark ages, Schaerer said.

"Once the real heat from the big bang cosmic explosion was over, the
universe was really a dark and cold place," he said.

Building-block galaxies such as Abell 1835 are thought to have been
formed out of the bright islands of matter that formed after the big
bang.

Gravity pulled those islands together into clusters like Abell 1835,
which later collided and merged to form present-day large galaxies.

Scaling the age of the universe to a human lifetime of 80 years, the new
discovery shows a child of two and a half years old. The previous record
holder showed a four-year-old toddler.

Pictures of Abell 1835 available on the Internet (www.eso.org) show it
as little more than a shadow sandwiched between large black blobs. "This
is an extremely faint object," said Schaerer. "This is the best one can
do."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&ncid=585&e=3&u=/nm/20
040301/sc_nm/science_galaxy_dc