Japanese astronomers discover ancient galaxy

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Wednesday, 25th April 2012
In General Japan News,

Japanese astronomers discover ancient galaxy

Astronomers from Japan today (April 25th) announced that they had discovered the most distant set of galaxies ever.

Using a giant telescope located in Hawaii, the stargazers spotted a group of galazies a staggering 12.72 billion light years from Earth, AFP reported.

They say that this is the furthest-away galaxy ever spotted and that it is so far away that the light travelling from it began its journey just one billion years after the big bang.

"This shows a galaxy cluster already existed in the early stages of the universe when it was still less than one billion years into its history of 13.7 billion years," the of astronomers told the news agency.

Using the Subaru Telescope in the US island, a team of astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan worked with the Graduate University of Advanced Studies to make the discovery.

NASA researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope believe they have discovered a galaxy cluster some 13.1 billion light years away, but this is yet to be verified.

Earlier this year, the Japanese company responsible for building the Tokyo Sky Tree said it would like to build an elevator into space using carbon nanotubes.

Written by Graham McPherson