The New York Times has a brief but interesting article covering the results of two separate teams that are seeking to get a handle on the formation of the first galaxies in the universe. This is a particularly pressing question these days, after the WMAP satellite's improved measurement of the reionization of the universe, thought to have been prompted by the death throes of the first or second generation of stars. Teams using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea carried out the relevant observations. They show a rapid increase in the number of galaxies within the first billion years after the big bang (13.7 billion years ago). The article states
How the dark ages ended is a matter of hot debate. From 300 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang, figures from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Satellite show that the hydrogen in space was reionized and split back into electrons and protons by radiation from stars or, perhaps, black holes. Calculations suggest that the first stars to form, out of hydrogen and helium produced in the Big Bang, would be 100 times as massive as the Sun and would rapidly explode, scattering heavier elements like oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and iron â€" the stuff of planets and life â€" into space to serve as material for a new generation of stars. The stars forming in the newly discovered galaxies are probably of the second type, Dr. Illingworth said.
referring to Garth Illingworth, from the University of California, Santa Cruz, a member of the team using Hubble. A particularly fun aspect of the article is the feeling of the rapid progress currently going on in cosmology.
Nor is the Japanese record likely to last long. Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology said in an e-mail message that he had used the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea and a quirk of Einsteinian gravity to find protogalaxies even farther in the past, less than 500 million years after the Big Bang. These objects, too feeble and small for the Hubble to have seen them, have been amplified by the gravitational fields of intervening galaxies.
Oh well, gotta run - this is an incredibly busy week. On Monday I gave the Physics colloquium at Cornell, which was great fun - seeing collaborators and friends and meeting lots of new people, particularly students. And tomorrow I'm giving the same talk here at Syracuse. But tomorrow evening I should start to see my own first light at the end of the tunnel.
