April 04, 2003
Murky Pond

This was fun:


SOCORRO — Chris Carilli's task is like trying to see what grows at the bottom of a murky pond.
The pond, in this case, is the universe. At the murky bottom, barely visible through the muck of space and time, is the birth of a thousand suns.
With a combination of persistence, technology and luck, Carilli and his colleagues have for the first time seen baby stars swirling around a massive black hole.
The stars are so far away, and it has therefore taken their light so long to get here, that the astronomers are effectively seeing back near the dawn of time.
There, in the early universe, the first galaxies were forming, and Carilli and his colleagues are struggling to understand how. How did the dust and gas of the early universe coalesce to form the planets, stars and galaxies we see around us today?

Posted by John Fleck at April 04, 2003 07:01 AM
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