Stars Long Dead Found
Pravda, Russia
___________
Maryland (US):
Researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland believe they have captured traces of radiation from long-extinguished stars that were "born" during the universe's infancy.
The research represents the first tangible - but not conclusive - evidence of these earliest stars, which are thought to have produced the raw materials from which future stars, including our sun, were created.
The Big Bang, the explosion believed to have created the universe, is thought to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago. About 100 million years later, hydrogen atoms began to merge and ignite, creating brightly burning stars. Just what these stars were like wasn't clear.
Kashlinsky's team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to measure the cosmic radiation, which is infrared light invisible to the human eye, in a small sliver of the sky. The team then subtracted the radiation levels of all known galaxies and suggested that the leftover measurements include radiation given off by those earliest stars. If the team's conclusions are correct, the study will advance understanding of how the universe originally lit up.
Nov 02, 2005
Pravda, Russia
___________
Maryland (US):
Researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland believe they have captured traces of radiation from long-extinguished stars that were "born" during the universe's infancy.
The research represents the first tangible - but not conclusive - evidence of these earliest stars, which are thought to have produced the raw materials from which future stars, including our sun, were created.
The Big Bang, the explosion believed to have created the universe, is thought to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago. About 100 million years later, hydrogen atoms began to merge and ignite, creating brightly burning stars. Just what these stars were like wasn't clear.
Kashlinsky's team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to measure the cosmic radiation, which is infrared light invisible to the human eye, in a small sliver of the sky. The team then subtracted the radiation levels of all known galaxies and suggested that the leftover measurements include radiation given off by those earliest stars. If the team's conclusions are correct, the study will advance understanding of how the universe originally lit up.
Nov 02, 2005
