reionization

"One sees qualities at a distance and defects at close range." -Victor Hugo A couple of weeks ago we took a look at the most distant galaxy (so far) in the known Universe, a galaxy so far away that it takes exclusively infrared observations from our most power space telescopes (Hubble and Spitzer) in order to detect it. What's perhaps even more remarkable is that the light we do detect from it -- the light we detected in the infrared -- was actually emitted in the Ultraviolet part of the spectrum! Image credit: NASA, ESA, Garth Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Rychard…
"Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view." -Max Planck Tomorrow morning, at 8 AM my time, the press conference that cosmologists have spent the past decade waiting for will finally happen, and the Planck satellite -- the most powerful satellite ever to measure the leftover radiation from the Big Bang -- will finally unveil its results about the origin and composition of the Universe. Image credit: ESA / LFI and HFI Consortia. They've figured out how to subtract the…