Is the Universe older than expected?July 10, 2002An analysis of 13.5 thousand million-year-old X-rays, captured by ESA's XMM-Newton satellite, has shown that either the Universe may be older than astronomers had thought or that mysterious, undiscovered 'iron factories' litter the early Universe. ESA`s Norbert Schartel and colleagues from the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik,Germany, found more iron than anyone thought possible in the extremely distant celestial object, APM 8279+5255. The object is a quasar, that is, a young galaxy containing an incredibly bright central region, caused by gas falling into a giant black hole. APM 8279+5255 is 13.5 thousand million light years away. Scientists know this because they have estimated a property of its light known as the red shift, which is caused by the expansion of the Universe stretching the wavelengths of light emitted by the celestial object. XMM-Newton's data showed that iron was three times more abundant in the quasar than in our Solar System. Since iron is released by exploding stars, according to precise physical phenomena, and scientists think it builds up across the Universe gradually with time. The Solar System formed just 5 thousand million years ago, so it should contain more iron than the quasar, which formed over 13.5 thousand million years ago. The fact that the quasar contains three times more iron than the Sun is therefore a major puzzle. If the older-Universe interpretation is wrong, there is only one other, stranger possibility, according to Jansen. Somewhere in the early Universe there must be undiscovered `iron factories`, producing the metal by unknown physical means. Understandably, Jansen is cautious about this, saying, "This is the less likely solution in my opinion." If such mysterious objects exist, perhaps XEUS (a next-generation X-ray satellite currently under study by ESA for launch sometime in the next decade) will discover them, because it will have the ability to see the very first galaxies. In the shorter term, ESA is launching INTEGRAL, a gamma-ray-detecting satellite, in October 2002. It will observe exploding stars to study the formation of chemical elements and may explain the anomalous iron observations. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Related Quasar Current Events and Quasar News Articles Mystery of missing hydrogen Something vital is missing in the far distant reaches of the Universe: hydrogen - the raw material for stars, planets and possible life. Serendipitous observations reveal rare event in life of distant quasar A bit of serendipity has given astronomers a surprise view of a never-before-observed event in the birth of a galaxy. Colossal Black Holes Common in the Early Universe Astronomers think that many - perhaps all - galaxies in the universe contain massive black holes at their centers. New observations with the Submillimeter Array now suggest that such colossal black holes were common even 12 billion years ago, when the universe was only 1.7 billion years old and galaxies were just beginning to form. Young Galaxy's Magnetism Surprises Astronomers Astronomers have made the first direct measurement of the magnetic field in a young, distant galaxy, and the result is a big surprise. BOSS: the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) uses a 2.5-meter telescope with a wider field of view than any other large telescope, located on a mountaintop in New Mexico called Apache Point and devoted solely to mapping the universe. 'Cosmic ghost' discovered by volunteer astronomer When Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski and his colleagues at Oxford University enlisted public support in cataloguing galaxies, they never envisioned the strange object Hanny van Arkel found in archived images of the night sky. Polarizing filter allows astronomers to see disks surrounding black holes For the first time, a team of international researchers has found a way to view the accretion disks surrounding black holes and verify that their true electromagnetic spectra match what astronomers have long predicted they would be. RIT Team Simulates First Merger of Three Black Holes on a Supercomputer The same team of astrophysicists that cracked the computer code simulating two black holes crashing and merging together has now, for the first time, caused a three-black-hole collision. Cosmic engines surprise XMM-Newton XMM-Newton has been surprised by a rare type of galaxy, from which it has detected a higher number of X-rays than thought possible. The observation gives new insight into the powerful processes shaping galaxies during their formation and evolution. New population of faint protogalaxies discovered Astronomers have found a new population of faint protogalaxies by taking the most sensitive spectroscopic survey ever of a time when the universe was only 15% of its present age. More Quasar Current Events and Quasar News Articles |
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