What is The Blob in Outer Space?

[CommonMan]

WASHINGTON - A strange giant space “blob” spotted when the universe was relatively young has got astronomers puzzled.

Using space and ground telescopes, astronomers looked back to when the universe was only 800 million years old and found something that was out of proportion and out of time. It was gaseous, big, and emitted a certain type of radiation, said study lead author Masami Ouchi, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Calif.

Scientists don’t even know what to call it. So they just called it a radiation-emitting “blob.” They used that horror-film staple 34 times in their peer-reviewed study, which will be published in next month’s edition of the Astrophysical Journal. More formally, they named it Himiko, after a legendary ancient Japanese queen.

What are your ideals on this?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Not much to say really. It's a new type of object that has been detected. Little is known right now. That's how it is with new things we find in the Universe. Right now, there are lots of ideas (all pure speculation) as to what it means. As the SDC article says, now that it has been found, all our available tools will be turned on it to learn more.
Here's the SDC article, btw.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... -blob.html

 

[michaelmozina]

WASHINGTON - A strange giant space “blob” spotted when the universe was relatively young has got astronomers puzzled.

Using space and ground telescopes, astronomers looked back to when the universe was only 800 million years old and found something that was out of proportion and out of time. It was gaseous, big, and emitted a certain type of radiation, said study lead author Masami Ouchi, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, Calif.

Scientists don’t even know what to call it. So they just called it a radiation-emitting “blob.” They used that horror-film staple 34 times in their peer-reviewed study, which will be published in next month’s edition of the Astrophysical Journal. More formally, they named it Himiko, after a legendary ancient Japanese queen.

What are your ideals on this?

Personally I think it's a "mature" and fully formed galaxy viewed at the very limit of our current visual technology.

I think the notion that it's a "completely new" object remains to be seen. You'd need to have far greater resolution to be able tell much from this distance. Hopefully this will be high on the list of the objects to be studied by the James Webb telescope.

 

[DrRocket]

Not much to say really. It's a new type of object that has been detected. Little is known right now. That's how it is with new things we find in the Universe. Right now, there are lots of ideas (all pure speculation) as to what it means. As the SDC article says, now that it has been found, all our available tools will be turned on it to learn more.
Here's the SDC article, btw.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... -blob.html

Your point is well taken.

This gadget is 13 billion years old. The announcement of the discovery is 2 days old.

We probably ought to let the ink dry on the announcement before we nail down the precise characteristics and composition of the "blob".

A bunch of amateur speculation is not what is needed at this time.

Where is Michael Landon when you need him ?

 

[ZenGalacticore]

Maybe a primordial, proto-galactic mass swirling around a giant black hole formed by the explosion of a first generation superstar? 13 billion ly away, sounds reasonable.

 

[michaelmozina]

Maybe a primordial, proto-galactic mass swirling around a giant black hole formed by the explosion of a first generation superstar? 13 billion ly away, sounds reasonable.

I guess that is the "assumption", but frankly I've seen the dates of galaxy formation theories pushed back since the very start, and my impression is that we are only limited by our technology and "mature" galaxies exist as far as our technology can see. My guess is these "smudges" will turn out to be mature galaxies and there will be yet even more "smudges" to be seen in the next generation of telescopes for as long as we continue to improve the technology.

 

[ZenGalacticore]

Maybe a primordial, proto-galactic mass swirling around a giant black hole formed by the explosion of a first generation superstar? 13 billion ly away, sounds reasonable.

I guess that is the "assumption", but frankly I've seen the dates of galaxy formation theories pushed back since the very start, and my impression is that we are only limited by our technology and "mature" galaxies exist as far as our technology can see. My guess is these "smudges" will turn out to be mature galaxies and there will be yet even more "smudges" to be seen in the next generation of telescopes for as long as we continue to improve the technology.

From the previous posts before mine, where did you get that my postulation was the 'assumption'? But I see your point. With all of our available tools(radio,infrared, gamma, and visual telescopes, etc) we can only 'see' to about 13 billion light-yearsor so. It certainly stands to reason-from what I've read-that the frontiers of the visible Universe could extend much further.
It is still, however, a logical conjecture that any 'blob' 13 billion light-years or more away is a proto-galaxy. It makes sense that short-lived superstars, after a few million years of life or less, promptly exploded and created super-massive black holes that acted as attractors and later 'anchors' of the matter that became the individual swirling galaxies.

We're seeing these 'smudges' as they were 13 or more billion years ago. If they 'were' proto-galaxies then, ie, 13 billion years ago, then they are most assuredly 'mature' spiral galaxies 'now', in their prime, cosmic majesty!

 

[ZenGalacticore]

And btw Michael, who ever said that all the galaxies formed at the same 'time'?

 

[michaelmozina]

Maybe a primordial, proto-galactic mass swirling around a giant black hole formed by the explosion of a first generation superstar? 13 billion ly away, sounds reasonable.

I guess that is the "assumption", but frankly I've seen the dates of galaxy formation theories pushed back since the very start, and my impression is that we are only limited by our technology and "mature" galaxies exist as far as our technology can see. My guess is these "smudges" will turn out to be mature galaxies and there will be yet even more "smudges" to be seen in the next generation of telescopes for as long as we continue to improve the technology.

From the previous posts before mine, where did you get that my postulation was the 'assumption'? But I see your point. With all of our available tools(radio,infrared, gamma, and visual telescopes, etc) we can only 'see' to about 13 billion light-yearsor so. It certainly stands to reason-from what I've read-that the frontiers of the visible Universe could extend much further.
It is still, however, a logical conjecture that any 'blob' 13 billion light-years or more away is a proto-galaxy. It makes sense that short-lived superstars, after a few million years of life or less, promptly exploded and created super-massive black holes that acted as attractors and later 'anchors' of the matter that became the individual swirling galaxies.

We're seeing these 'smudges' as they were 13 or more billion years ago. If they 'were' proto-galaxies then, ie, 13 billion years ago, then they are most assuredly 'mature' spiral galaxies 'now', in their prime, cosmic majesty!

If one begins with the belief that the physical universe is around 13.7 billion years old, and all of it began at a single point, the notion that we should observe a "proto-galaxy" 13 billion light years away makes sense. It's always been assumed that it worked this way. I was taught in school that it probably took "billions" (plural) of years for galaxies to form. Now we see much more fully formed galaxies forming before the one billion year mark. That concept of "maturity" in galaxy formation hasn't really held up to close scrutiny because each observation seems to defy the earlier "predictions".

I see little if any evidence that galaxies have changed all that much. For all I know, matter was not all condensed to a single point and galaxies predated this 'bang' event. I really don't know what to believe at this point because so many earlier predictions has turned out to be wrong, and we see so little evidence of galaxy "evolution" over time.

 

[michaelmozina]

And btw Michael, who ever said that all the galaxies formed at the same 'time'?

I was not trying to suggest that, and few folks have ever suggested anything like that to me. I'm sorry if that is what my words implied and for any confusion on that issue.

I just don't see much in the way of evidence to suggest that all mass was collected together at a singular point.