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- For the first 400,000 years the universe was a pea soup fog of charged particles, protons and electrons. After 400,000 years the universe cooled to where the positive and negative charges could combine into neutral atoms.
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-. The pea soup fog was exceedingly bright with light. When the hydrogen atoms became neutral the universe became dark as photons escaped into expanding space. No stars had a chance to form yet. Later, when the first stars did form they were so hot they shown mostly in the ultraviolet light spectrum, not in visible light. The hydrogen gas atoms quickly absorbed the ultraviolet photons as electrons jumped into their highest energy levels.
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-. The first stars were made mostly of hydrogen because the heavier elements had not yet formed in the core of stars……….. hydrogen formed into helium, carbon fusion, oxygen fusion, neon fusion, magnesium fusion, silicon fusion, then at the core inert iron. All of these heavier elements were blown into interstellar space with each supernovae explosion.
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-. These first stars could have been a million times larger than our sun. It is also possible that many of these large star formations fragmented into many smaller stars, maybe each only 10 times larger than our sun.
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-. Giant stars greater than 100 solar mass burn out quickly and explode into supernovae after very short lifetimes. The smaller stars on the other hand can burn for hundreds of millions of years before running out of fuel and exploding as supernovae.
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-. Most all of the stars would have been large enough to have collapsed in blackholes after shedding their outer layers of heavier elements into outer space. When these blackholes are spinning, jets of escaping hot gas exits from the poles. We see these jets as rotating beams of light today as quasars.
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-. The first quasar discovered (3C – 273) had a redshift of 0.16 which meant it was 2,000,000,000 light-years away. Astronomers began searching for more quasars. Soon quasars were found having a red shift of 2.0 , meaning their light had traveled for more than 10,000,000,000 years. Redshifts of 4.9 were later detected meaning these quasars were 12,500,000,000 light-years away.
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- Quasars are difficult to find because we only see them if their powerful light beams are pointed at, or sweeping by, our direct line of sight. The intense jets peak between the redshifts of 2.0 to 3.0 , when most galaxies were the richest in interstellar gas.
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-. In the year 2000 the Sloan Digital Sky Survey identified 40 quasars beyond a redshift of 5.5. The record was a redshift of 7.085. This quasar started shining just 770,000,000 years after the Big Bang. It is estimated that the quasar was a massive 1 billion solar mass star.
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-. Quasars are the blackholes at the center of galaxies, or extremely large stars. Since 1995, with the Hubble deep field images, time exposures of 30 hours staring at single point in space, allowed astronomers to begin seeing the galaxies themselves , where these quasars were located.
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-. In 2009 modifications to the Hubble Space Telescope added infrared cameras able to see hundreds of galaxies exceeding redshifts of 7.0. The most distant redshift was 11.9. This galaxy existed only 400,000,000 years after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion light-years away.
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-. 140 orbits of Hubble ,with each orbit taking 90 minutes, providing 45 minutes of viewing time. That is a time exposure of 63 hours to collect photons from the most distant galaxies. On top of that 250 galaxies with redshifts greater than 6.0 have been located behind foreground “galaxy clusters“. These massive clusters of mass provide “gravitational lensing” that further magnifies these distant galaxies.
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-. Gamma Ray Burst are another light source that allows astronomers to probe into the early universe. Gamma Ray Bursts are short blasts of high-energy radiation that occur when the supernova explosions of massive stars collapse into blackholes. The spinning blackholes have accretion disks and spew jets of Gamma Rays out the rotational poles. The escaping Gamma Rays slam into the interstellar gas in space creating infrared light that astronomers can detect.
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-. These Gamma Ray Bursts outshine the galaxies by 1,000,000 times and outshine quasars by 10 to 100 times. These bursts allow the capability to measure redshifts out to 15 or 20, less than 200,000,000 years after the Big Bang. This has be close to when the very first stars were shining.
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- Because Gamma Ray Bursts are created by jets off the poles , 99 % of them are pointed away from the Earth. We still see about one Burst per day, detected by satellites.
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-. Footnote 1. Redshifts occur when a light source is moving away from you and the wavelength of the light gets stretched out to a larger wavelength, or a lower frequency, shifting towards the red end of the spectrum. In the case of deep space it is not a separation of velocities but a separation caused by the expansion of space as light travels great distances over wide expanses of space the expansion lengthens the wavelength, causing the redshift.
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-. Footnote 2:. The Dark Age of the Universe. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0307396
- The First Stars in the Universe and Cosmic Reionization. . http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0608450
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-. Footnote 3: -------------------- Big Bang time = zero
--------------------------------------plasma to neutral hydrogen = 380,000 years
--------------------------------------first stars = 100,000,000
--------------------------------------first galaxies = 500,000,000
--------------------------------------quasars = 700,000,000
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- Footnote 4: Redshifts of hydrogen's Lyman - alpha spectral line is a wavelength of 120 nanometers. Over the distance of expanding space the wavelength is stretched out to 1029 nanometers.
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----------------------------- 1029 - 121 = 980 nanometers is the amount of wavelength stretched by expanding space.
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----------------------------- Redshift = 908 / 121 = 7.5
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----------------------- Redshift = wavelength observed - wavelength at rest / wavelength at rest
------------------------ z = (wo - ws) / ws
------------------------- 1 + z = wo / ws
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--------------------- The distance in billion lightyears = 12.65 + 0.06( Redshift)
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--------------------- The distance in lightyears = 12.65 + 0.06( 7.5)
--------------------- The distance in lightyears = 13.1 billion years
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----------------------The Big Bang occurred at 13.82 billion years
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- The source of the light for a Redshift of 7.5 occurred 720,000,000 years after the Big Bang.
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- Footnote 5: ------ 13,820,000,000 years ago for the Big Bang
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----------------------- 10^-32 milliseconds later the Cosmic Inflation occurred expanding the Universe to the size of a golf ball.
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---------------------- 0.01 milliseconds Quarks combine into protons
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--------------------- to 200 seconds hydrogen and helium nuclei form
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--------------------- 380,000 years. Nuclei capture electrons and form neutral atoms of hydrogen and helium. The Universe has expanded to 0.09% of its current size.
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-------------------- to 300,000,000 years. The Cosmic Background Radiation is the only “ light”. The Universe is 10% of its current size.
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-------------------- 300,000,000 to today dense gas clouds collapse into stars.
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---------------------10,000,000,000 years. Dark Energy overcomes gravity and the Universe begins expanding at an ever increasing rate. The Universe is 77% of its current size.
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--------------------13,820,000,000 years that is today, March 25, 2014. My dog Molly’s birthday. She is 2 years old. The Universe is at its present size.
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- Footnote 6: See review #1603, #1550, #1551, #835, for more of the math involved in these calculations.
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RSVP, with comments, suggestions, corrections. Index of reviews available ---
--- Some reviews are at: -------------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
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---- https://plus.google.com/u/0/ , “Jim Detrick” ----- www.facebook.com ---
---- www.twitter.com , --- 707-536-3272 ---- Tuesday, March 25, 2014 ---
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