Jun 26 1996
From The Space Library
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) identified what they believed to be the most distant objects observed to date. Researchers based at State University of New York at Stony Brook found several dozen galaxies so far away that they might have existed when the universe was less than 5 percent of its present age. The team of astronomers made its calculations on the distances of the galaxies from the Earth by relying on the relationship between speed and distance in the expanding universe. According to the scientific understanding of the speed-distance relationship, "the expansion of the universe causes the light from distant galaxies to be `redshifted'," meaning that, because of the expansion of space, light leaving a distant galaxy as blue arrives at the HST as red light. The redshifting phenomenon allows researchers to tentatively measure the distance the light has traveled. Noting that other factors, such as dust, also might make a galaxy's light red, Mark E. Dickinson of the Space Telescope Science Institute categorized the study as "enticing," but also clarified, "it's not a proof."
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