2003 SPACE SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| Giant Galaxy String Defies Models of How Universe Evolved
| G03-072 | 01/07/04 | 00:03:31 | Wide-field telescope observations of the remote and therefore early Universe, looking back to a time when it was a fifth of its present age have revealed an enormous string of galaxies about 300 million light-years long. This new structure defies current models of how the Universe evolved, which cannot explain how a string this big could have formed so early.
The string is comparable in size to the "Great Wall" of galaxies found in the nearby Universe by Dr. John Huchra and Dr. Margaret Geller in 1989. This is the first time astronomers have been able to map an area in the early Universe big enough to reveal such a galaxy structure.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): Giant Galaxy String - Animation - The string lies 10,800 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Grus (the Crane). The distance light travels in a year, almost six trillion miles, is one light-year, so we see the string as it appeared 10.8 billion years ago. It is at least 300 million light-years long and about 50 million light-years wide. The astronomers have detected 37 galaxies and one quasar in the string (shown in the rotating cube), but scientists said there are almost certainly many thousands of Galaxies contained in the string. Scientists said they are seeing the string as it was when the Universe was only a fifth of its present age.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (2): Evolution of the Universe - This new structure defies current models of how the Universe evolved, which cannot explain how a string this big could have formed so early. This animation shows how the structure of the universe evolved from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe's (WMAP) "baby picture" of the Big Bang. Matter clumps under the force of gravity, then the first stars ignite, and finally the structures of galaxies form.
Courtesy: NASA/WMAP Science Team /WMAP Science Team
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| ITEM (3): Blanco Telescope at Cerro Tololo - The initial observations were made with the 4-m (159-inch) Blanco Telescope at the National Science Foundation's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
Courtesy: National Science Foundation
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