Universe as I always say is a cloud of mysteries and not many of these have yet been answered by astronomers. To answer these questions one has to go back in time. No, I am not talking about a time machine, as the best way to go back in time is to look at far away galaxies since they show us the time when the Universe was not as mature as it is today. The light we get from these parts of the Universe is old because it has been travelling the cosmos for millions or even billions of years.
Our telescopes are not so advanced that they can shoot these galaxies on their own. We therefore need the help of some kind of a natural lensing that can get us closer to these marvels. “Gravitational Lensing” is the natural magnification of distance sources by foreground structures. It can be explained as a natural gravitational lens created by the gravity-bending mass of a nearer cluster of galaxies.
Using the 10-meter Keck II telescope atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii and this natural gravitational telescope astronomers have been able to see the farthest known galaxies that also show the Universe in its infancy. These newly discovered galaxies are seen as they existed just 500 million years after the birth of the Universe. The Universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old it means that the galaxies discovered are 13.2 billion light years away from us. Astronomers have stated that by carefully looking through the clusters they have been able to locate six star-forming galaxies seen at unprecedented distances.
The light from these galaxies was magnified by a factor of 20 by the gravitational lens. To know more about the star forming process researches have to study such galaxies which are so far away from us. Researchers have stated that after the Big Bang there were no star and that time was called as the Cosmic Dark Age. Eventually the fog was burned off by hot, young stars this finally ended the Cosmic Dark Age and the Universe was changed into a lovely place full of stars, planets and galaxies.
Via: usatoday
