Far-flung galaxy's carbon signal

28 March 2012 Last updated at 03:26 ET

Far-flung galaxy's carbon signal


By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, Manchester

Astronomers have detected vast amounts of gas and dust in the galaxy that contains the most distant supermassive black hole known to science.

The galaxy, called J1120+0641, is so far away, its light has taken more than 13 billion years to reach Earth.

Researchers say they were surprised to see so much carbon in the observations.

The element is made via nuclear fusion of helium in massive stars and ejected when these giants end their lives in dramatic supernova explosions.

It is an indication of just how dynamic the early Universe must have been, said Bram Venemans, of the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

"The glow of carbon tells us there are stars being formed, and the dust also tells us that - that there is lots of ultraviolet light [from bright new stars] heating the dust. But the amount of carbon we can derive means a lot of stars must have formed and produced this carbon," he told BBC News.

Dr Venemans was speaking here in Manchester at the UK National Astronomy Meeting (NAM).

He and colleagues used the IRAM array of millimetre-wave telescopes in the French Alps to make their study of J1120+0641.

They see the distant galaxy as it was just 740 million years after the Big Bang, when the abundance of chemical elements in the cosmos would have been dominated far more by hydrogen and helium than it is today.

The supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core is about two billion times the mass of our sun, and shines as it shreds the matter falling into it.

The team might have expected to see a strong signal for heavier elements (or "metals" as astronomers refer to them) in this energetic emission, but the IRAM detects carbon across the galaxy.

"We found this accreting black hole and you see these metal lines, and that is not too surprising. This is quite a small region of space and you only need a couple of stars to go into the black hole to pollute its signal. But it's the same across the galaxy," Dr Venemans explained.

This indicates J1120+0641 is rapidly producing stars, cycling heavier and heavier elements as they go though the generations.

From their observations, Dr Venemans and colleagues calculate that J1120+0641 was forming those stars at a rate 100 times that seen in our Milky Way Galaxy today.

This is not quite as fast as some big galaxies later in cosmic time, but it is still an impressive performance.

"The presence of so much carbon confirms that massive star formation must have occurred in the short period between the Big Bang and the time we are now observing the galaxy," the Heidelberg researcher said.

The team credits the success of its study to a recent upgrade to the IRAM facility, which sits 2,550-m up on the Plateau de Bure. The processing of the signals received by the observatory's six dishes is now much improved.

"We would not have been able to detect this emission only a couple years ago," said team member, Dr Pierre Cox, director of IRAM.

So, if heavy elements were forming at a high rate that early in the universe (700 million years out is quite early) AND if (as some of the other articles on here are pointing out) our fairly recent discovery of 760 exoplanets extrapolates to and confirms millions of earthlike planets in our galaxy alone, then the question becomes even more puzzling--- where are they all?---where are all the other advanced civilizations---- one would think that over the course of the last 12 billion years there would have been at least thousands, if not tens of thousands, of them in the Milky Way alone and some would now be hundreds of thousands of years old and have extremely advanced technologies--- yet we are still unable to detect any evidence of any of them, other than our own (and I don't consider any of the nonsense that the UFO people or various assorted other whackjobs have come up with to be evidence).

While I'm sure there are lots of imaginative, exotic and romantic possibilities, I fear that the answer is much more mundane--- they are quite rare to begin with and don't last very long. If there are Greedpublicans on all those other planets, then they just go into massive denial about what they are doing to their own environment and the resulting ecological collapse wipes them out, like a body clearing out a disease. Coming soon to planet Earth.....

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Posted in reply to the post by Hotspring 44:

28 March 2012 Last updated at 03:26 ET

Far-flung galaxy's carbon signal


By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, Manchester

Astronomers have detected vast amounts of gas and dust in the galaxy that contains the most distant supermassive black hole known to science.

The galaxy, called J1120+0641, is so far away, its light has taken more than 13 billion years to reach Earth.

Researchers say they were surprised to see so much carbon in the observations.

The element is made via nuclear fusion of helium in massive stars and ejected when these giants end their lives in dramatic supernova explosions.

It is an indication of just how dynamic the early Universe must have been, said Bram Venemans, of the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

"The glow of carbon tells us there are stars being formed, and the dust also tells us that - that there is lots of ultraviolet light [from bright new stars] heating the dust. But the amount of carbon we can derive means a lot of stars must have formed and produced this carbon," he told BBC News.

Dr Venemans was speaking here in Manchester at the UK National Astronomy Meeting (NAM).

He and colleagues used the IRAM array of millimetre-wave telescopes in the French Alps to make their study of J1120+0641.

They see the distant galaxy as it was just 740 million years after the Big Bang, when the abundance of chemical elements in the cosmos would have been dominated far more by hydrogen and helium than it is today.

The supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core is about two billion times the mass of our sun, and shines as it shreds the matter falling into it.

The team might have expected to see a strong signal for heavier elements (or "metals" as astronomers refer to them) in this energetic emission, but the IRAM detects carbon across the galaxy.

"We found this accreting black hole and you see these metal lines, and that is not too surprising. This is quite a small region of space and you only need a couple of stars to go into the black hole to pollute its signal. But it's the same across the galaxy," Dr Venemans explained.

This indicates J1120+0641 is rapidly producing stars, cycling heavier and heavier elements as they go though the generations.

From their observations, Dr Venemans and colleagues calculate that J1120+0641 was forming those stars at a rate 100 times that seen in our Milky Way Galaxy today.

This is not quite as fast as some big galaxies later in cosmic time, but it is still an impressive performance.

"The presence of so much carbon confirms that massive star formation must have occurred in the short period between the Big Bang and the time we are now observing the galaxy," the Heidelberg researcher said.

The team credits the success of its study to a recent upgrade to the IRAM facility, which sits 2,550-m up on the Plateau de Bure. The processing of the signals received by the observatory's six dishes is now much improved.

"We would not have been able to detect this emission only a couple years ago," said team member, Dr Pierre Cox, director of IRAM.

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Are you saying that we are alone in the Milky Way? The universe?

Edward

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Posted in reply to the post by Philip Tymon:

So, if heavy elements were forming at a high rate that early in the universe (700 million years out is quite early) AND if (as some of the other articles on here are pointing out) our fairly recent discovery of 760 exoplanets extrapolates to and confirms millions of earthlike planets in our galaxy alone, then the question becomes even more puzzling--- where are they all?---where are all the other advanced civilizations---- one would think that over the course of the last 12 billion years there would have been at least thousands, if not tens of thousands, of them in the Milky Way alone and some would now be hundreds of thousands of years old and have extremely advanced technologies--- yet we are still unable to detect any evidence of any of them, other than our own (and I don't consider any of the nonsense that the UFO people or various assorted other whackjobs have come up with to be evidence).

While I'm sure there are lots of imaginative, exotic and romantic possibilities, I fear that the answer is much more mundane--- they are quite rare to begin with and don't last very long. If there are Greedpublicans on all those other planets, then they just go into massive denial about what they are doing to their own environment and the resulting ecological collapse wipes them out, like a body clearing out a disease. Coming soon to planet Earth.....

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Not necessarily.

If you are familiar with Drake's Equation (which is not really an equation) (and if not, look it up on Wikipedia) you will see that it is an effort to try to quantify the number of advanced technological civilizations in the galaxy or universe (select your scope) at the present time, or at any given time. It lists the various factors we would need to know to come up with an answer (or, at least, make an educated guess).

One of those factors is, what percentages of planets with life eventually develop complex life, eventually develop intelligent life and eventually develop advanced technological civilization? (Another factor might be, how long does that all that take i.e. what is the rate of development of technological civilizations?)

Another factor is, once technological civilizations develop, how long do they last?

Astronomers had, for a long time, assumed that there should be a fair number of technological civilizations in the galaxy. By the time Drake's Equation was stated (1961), astronomers (including Drake) were beginning to wonder why we had never found any evidence of them (discounting all the kooks).

It is now 51 years later and, despite all efforts to find such evidence, none has been found.

Therefore, I am speculating that, first: advanced technological civilizations are actually quite rare-- the conditions necessary for them to arise are actually quite hard to achieve and,

second, once they do arise they do not last very long--- either they discover nuclear power and destroy themselves with nuclear weapons (as we barely have managed to avoid so far) or they radically change the planetary environment, thereby creating a planet-wide ecological collapse (as we seem to be doing) or they do something else disasterous and fatal to their civilization (such as experimenting with biological weapons which are either used on purpose or get out of control-- which we have just barely avoided doing).

The universe is a big place. If there is on average only one advanced technological civilization per galaxy, that still means there are about 200 billion such civilizations in the observable universe. However, if they are in another galaxy it is extremely unlikely we will ever know of their existence.

However, it is possible that we are the only advanced technological civilization in existence at this moment in this galaxy. We have only had radio communication for about 100 years. If we destroy ourselves in the next 100 years, that means our length of existence as an advanced technological civilization was only 200 years-- that's the blink of an eye on a cosmic scale. If we saw a picture of the galaxy over tens of millions of years (the galaxy is about 13 billion years old) with a light coming on and then going off as such civilizations came into being and then collapsed within 200 years we might see a lot of very brief winks of light, but few would stay on terribly long. Unlike the imaginative picture that one sees in Star Trek or Star Wars or such science fiction, the evidence so far is that, in science fact, we may very well be alone in the Milky Way. Sad but possibly true.

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Posted in reply to the post by Edward Mendoza:

Are you saying that we are alone in the Milky Way? The universe?

Edward

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Your elaborate reply reminds me of philosopher Bertrand Russell's statement: "Better red than dead." Do you agree with Russell?

Thank you in advance for your reply,

Edward

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Posted in reply to the post by Philip Tymon:

Not necessarily.

If you are familiar with Drake's Equation (which is not really an equation) (and if not, look it up on Wikipedia) you will see that it is an effort to try to quantify the number of advanced technological civilizations in the galaxy or universe (select your scope) at the present time, or at any given time. It lists the various factors we would need to know to come up with an answer (or, at least, make an educated guess)...

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