Dirty Flying Eyelid: Light from universe's first stars seen

Monday, January 28, 2013

Light from universe's first stars seen | Synopsis

Light from universe's first stars seen

Bad Moon Rising by makelessnoise
License (according to Flickr): Attribution License

Excerpt:

Nov. 1, 2012: Ultraviolet and visible light emitted by all the stars that ever before existed is still coursing with the universe. Astronomers describe this "fog" of starlight as the extragalactic background light (EBL). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Nov. 1, 2012: Gamma rays connect with the EBL, which offers astronomers a way to probe the outstanding content of the cosmos. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Nov. 1, 2012: This plot shows the locations of 150 blazars (green dots) made use of in the EBL study. NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

Astronomers have identified light from the very first stars in the universe, which are virtually as old as time itself. Shortly after the Big Bang 13. 7 billion years back, the universe cooled enough to let atoms type, which at some point clumped together to create the first stars.

Concepts:

People:

Marco Ajello

Overall Sentiment: -0.0675898

Relevance: 0.883853

Sentiment	Quote
0	"The EBL is the ensemble of photons generated by all the stars and also all the black holes in the universe," said astrophysicist Marco Ajello ...
-0.161713	"The EBL is the ensemble of photons generated by all the stars and also all the black holes in the universe," said astrophysicist Marco Ajello of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, who led the research. "The EBL also includes the light of the first massive stars that ever shone. We have a fairly good knowledge of the light emitted by 'normal' stars. Thus, by measuring the EBL we are able to constrain the light of the first stars."
0.0378062	"We use [blazars] as cosmic lighthouses," Ajello said. ...
0.025938	"We use [blazars] as cosmic lighthouses," Ajello said. "We observe their dimming due to the EBL 'fog'. This allows us to quantify how much EBL there is between us and the blazars. As blazars are distributed across the universe, we can measure the EBL at different epochs."
-0.142667	"Detecting these stars is very important, but currently impossible," Ajello said. ...
-0.2245	"Detecting these stars is very important, but currently impossible," Ajello said. "The Webb Telescope in a few years might be able to see the first galaxies (not the first stars though). In this way we are already able to set constraints on the amount and role of these stars in the early universe."
Sentiment Stats:	Number of Quotes: 6 Aggregate Sentiment: -0.4651358 Mean: -0.077522633333333 Standard Deviation: 1.4142135623731

Key:

Aggregate Sentiment is meant to be an indicator of an individual's overall sentiment.
The Mean is meant to be an indicator of an individual's average comment sentiment.
The Standard Deviation, when there are enough quotes, will indicate an individual's consistency of sentiment (i.e. a Standard Deviation of 0 would mean they were very consistent in their sentiment and 1 would mean they were very inconsistent).

Note that quote stats are likely to be meaningless beyond the aggregate score due to the tiny sample size. However, they are always provided just in case you find something useful there.

Additional Info:

Technology: Gamma-Ray Space Telescope

Overall Sentiment: -0.0524394

Relevance: 0.398532

Technology: Hubble Space Telescope

Overall Sentiment: 0.0493294

Relevance: 0.379972

Facility: Goddard Space Flight Center

Overall Sentiment: 0.270227

Relevance: 0.49227

Facility: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Overall Sentiment: -0.0788907

Relevance: 0.474134

StateOrCounty: California

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.303505

Organization: EBL).NASA

Overall Sentiment: 0.0168316

Relevance: 0.692593

Organization: NASA

Overall Sentiment: -0.0172969

Relevance: 0.386358

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Dirty Flying Eyelid