The Universe Is Almost Done Making Stars Looks like the cosmos may now be about as stellar as it’s going to get. The rate of new star formation has slowed considerably over the past few billion years, and the universe, like a Florida winter, is now dominated by the old and decaying. How researchers figured this out is especially cool.  The picture up top there is from the Hubble telescope’s Extreme Deep Field (XDF) survey. That’s not how they did it. But the XDF is the sum of almost 10 years of Hubble exposures that peer back 13.2 billion years into the universe’s history. The universe itself is only about 13.7 billion years old (the time since the Big Bang). The oldest stars and galaxies in the XDF are 13.2 billion light years away, which means we are looking at the universe as it was 13.2 billion years ago. The new study took pictures of the universe 2, 4, 6 and 9 billion years ago, and discovered that more than half of our stars are more than 9 billion years old. And the sooner to “now” that you look, the fewer new stars you see. Popular Science has some more info about this sobering tale of star birth. Looks like the universe is more a place of decay these days than it is creation. Hurry! Go look at the stars while you can! We only have several billion years before they burn out!!
Pop-upView Separately

The Universe Is Almost Done Making Stars

Looks like the cosmos may now be about as stellar as it’s going to get. The rate of new star formation has slowed considerably over the past few billion years, and the universe, like a Florida winter, is now dominated by the old and decaying.

How researchers figured this out is especially cool. 

The picture up top there is from the Hubble telescope’s Extreme Deep Field (XDF) survey. That’s not how they did it. But the XDF is the sum of almost 10 years of Hubble exposures that peer back 13.2 billion years into the universe’s history. The universe itself is only about 13.7 billion years old (the time since the Big Bang). The oldest stars and galaxies in the XDF are 13.2 billion light years away, which means we are looking at the universe as it was 13.2 billion years ago.

The new study took pictures of the universe 2, 4, 6 and 9 billion years ago, and discovered that more than half of our stars are more than 9 billion years old. And the sooner to “now” that you look, the fewer new stars you see.

Popular Science has some more info about this sobering tale of star birth. Looks like the universe is more a place of decay these days than it is creation. Hurry! Go look at the stars while you can! We only have several billion years before they burn out!!

Source: popsci.com

430 Notes/ Hide

  1. thoughtfodder reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  2. iamachildoftheuniverse reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  3. page03 reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  4. thestarsbeckon reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  5. etak182 reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  6. theguiltconsumes reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  7. swsmh reblogged this from astronomerinprogress
  8. soucieuxx reblogged this from foxylolo
  9. spaceisfullofaliens reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  10. markapolis reblogged this from bonedust
  11. bonedust reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  12. votterlicious reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  13. remolino-s reblogged this from attentives
  14. habbity reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  15. shmalexandra reblogged this from exploring-outer-space
  16. exploring-outer-space reblogged this from ofacelestialmind
  17. ofacelestialmind reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  18. kimbrelly reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  19. apocalypsesunshine reblogged this from jtotheizzoe and added:
    DEAR EARTH DEAR SOLAR SYSTEM DEAR OUR PREVIOUS STATE AS A PLANETARY NEBULA why did you have to wait so long to exist...
  20. lediainthetardis reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  21. mariposita17 reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  22. intercosmic reblogged this from droooling
  23. melissahendry reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  24. gnarkotika reblogged this from droooling
  25. droooling reblogged this from nietnietniet
  26. wakeupandlookwithin reblogged this from imagineatoms
  27. non-translatable reblogged this from landocalrizzian
  28. nietnietniet reblogged this from classywithadashoftrashy
  29. classywithadashoftrashy reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  30. electricmudpuppy reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  31. landocalrizzian reblogged this from crurum
  32. dedadedum reblogged this from crurum

Recent comments

Blog comments powered by Disqus