Astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy making stars at an amazing rate. It is creating stars at a rate more than a thousand times that of the Milky Way, but the remarkable thing about it is its extreme distance. This galaxy may call into question the current theory of how galaxies form.

The galaxy, nicknamed the baby boom galaxy, is making stars at a rate of about 4000 per year, compared to the Milky Way, which makes only 10 stars per year. This galaxy is also located very far from us, 12.3 billion light years. We have observed other starburst galaxies before, but none this far away, or similarly this old. This galaxy is a very young galaxy, since it is so far, we are looking at it as it was almost 12 billions years ago. That gives this galaxy the record for furthest (or youngest) starburst galaxy ever observed. The furthest before this one was 11.7 billion light years from us.

Now this galaxy calls into question the current most popular model for how galaxies are believed to form, called the hierarchal model. This model states that galaxies form slowly by consuming other smaller galaxies and star clusters, thus the stars in the galaxies should all have different birthdays. However, with this new galaxy all the stars will have very similar birthdays, meaning formation of around the same time. So the question now is whether this case is the norm or the exception. With this kind of star formation we may be witnessing the birth of one of the most massive elliptical galaxies in the universe.

The discovery of this was only possible through combined use of several different telescopes. Measurements in the radio wavelengths were made with the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array in New Mexico. Infrared data was used from both the Spitzer space telescope and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea Hawaii. Visible light images were used from both the Hubble Space Telescope and Japan’s Subaru Telescope also atop Mauna Kea. The identification of this galaxy and its properties would not have been possible without observations in the full range of the light spectrum. So its discovery is a fine example of the combination of different available technologies, from different sponsoring organizations. Now that we know how to find them, i.e. using data from across the electromagnetic spectrum, hopefully we can find out if galaxy baby booms were common in the distant universe, and if not, what is special about this case.

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Recently an exciting new type of ground-based telescope came online. It is a collaboration between the University of Arizona, the National Institute of Astrophysics in Italy, and several institutions in Germany. It is an innovative idea to use two large mirrors for the telescope, like a pair of binoculars. This will give the telescope a large collecting area while avoiding complications of making one very large mirror.

The idea first started back in 1992 between Arizona and Italy. They only had the funding to make one mirror, but in 1997 with the addition of Germany and Ohio State University, the project was under way. The telescope mount was constructed in Italy and shipped to Arizona, where it joined the mirrors being constructed. The observatory will be part of the Mt. Graham International Observatory near Safford, Arizona.

The telescope will consist of two 8.54-meter mirrors on a shared mount, which has the light gathering power equivalent to one 11.8-meter mirror and a resolving power of a 22.8-meter mirror. The building of the two mirrors is a delicate and complicated process. The mirrors must go through an extensive annealing and cooling process. Then two tons of glass are added and then a slow heating process started, then another round of annealing and cooling. During this process glass leaks are possible which can really complicate things. Once finished the mirror mold must be cleaned and polished very carefully and exactly. The mirrors must stay in a temperature-controlled environment to prevent temperature changes affecting the surface of the mirrors.

The first primary mirror saw first light in 2005, but it wasn’t until 2008 that both mirrors came online together. The optical instruments include a UV spectrograph, thermal infrared imager, near infrared camera, high-resolution optical spectrograph, optical direct imager, and more. The telescope is designed for observing in the UV, optical, and infrared wavelengths.

The Large Binocular Telescope observatory (LBT) is the world’s highest resolution and most technologically advanced optical telescope, creating images in the near infrared with 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. There should be some exciting new developments coming from the LBT once it really gets going. It is a great example of innovation and ingenuity to overcome the technological obstacles of making very large mirrors and by using an array of smaller (yet still large) mirrors.

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Having been away from my Schopenhauer series for nearly 2 months, I’ve felt the longing pangs of unfinished business in my gulliver.  So it is with renewed vim and vigor that I return to the dais for yet another installment.

When I think back on my earliest encounter with philosophy, it is not dissimilar from my first brush with theology.  During the spring of my freshman year at the University of Minnesota, I became enamored of theology largely on account of dating an inordinately religious woman named S____.  My enamored fancy fell up Saint Thomas Aquinas via a medieval history course, and I soon found myself reading Summa Theologica at Coffman Union between classes.

Q:  Is there a more wearisome, and austere scholarly contribution than Summa Theologica?
A:  Not likely.

I find a it little amusing that my first forays into philosophy and theology resulted in overmatched efforts involving the aforementioned.  One might deem Socrates and CS Lewis a bit more age appropriate if not efficacious.

Immanuel Kant’s contribution to modern philosophy is well known for synthesizing empiricism and continental rationalism.  Where empiricists contended that knowledge arises from experience, and rationalists asserted that reason alone provides the basis of knowledge, Kant – in his own estimation – created a compromise between the two by presenting knowledge as function of comprehension involving 2 actors:  Concepts of the mind and phenomena.  Concepts (categories) of the mind are 4 fold with 3 aspects each – quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence, necessity).  These concepts are universals; we cannot process phenomena (experience) without them.  For example, we cannot look at 2 apples on a table without immediately apprehending plurality.  Kant went on to refer to these categories as filters through which knowledge is made possible.

There remains in Kant the problem of things – in – themselves.  If knowledge is obtained by applying filters to phenomena arriving via our senses, then how can we ever say with certainty “That which I perceive exists as I perceive it”? On this point, Schopenhauer departs from Kant and is correct in doing so.  For Schopenhauer, the problem of knowing things – in – themselves is even deeper than Kant implied for it is not enough to merely enumerate the filters through which knowledge is made manifest without acknowledging the obvious conclusion:  That so long as filters lie between our senses and our reason, the extension of our knowledge cannot lie beyond our senses i.e. we do not know a sun “but only an eye that sees the sun…”

But we do know our bodies….

To be continued…

SN 1987A was a supernova in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy. It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs from Earth, close enough that it was visible to the naked eye however it could only be seen from the Southern Hemisphere. It was the closest observed supernova since SN 1604, which occurred in the Milky Way itself. Its brightness peaked in May of 1987 and slowly declined in the following months. It was the first opportunity for modern astronomers to see a supernova up close. But 1987A was different than most observed supernova. Most supernovas grow dimmer with the passage of time as they release their energy. But the X-ray and radio emissions from 1987A grew brighter which made it a bit of an oddity in the world of supernovas. Well it’s no longer alone in this category.

This new supernova, called SN 1996cr was singled out in 2001. It was discovered as a bright variable source in the Cygnus Spiral galaxy using the Chandra X-ray observatory. At the time it could not confidently be identified. Years later astronomers were reviewing the spectrum of the object as seen by Europe’s Very Large Telescope and interest was renewed. Astronomers began looking through the archives of data from many different space and ground based telescopes. 1996cr was identified not only as a supernova but as the brightest supernova ever seen in radio and x-ray. And like SN 1987A its brightness has increased over the years. The two look alike in many ways except that 1996cr is about a thousand times brighter.

The combined data from both supernovae have led astronomers to develop a model of what is happening with these types of explosions. Before the original star exploded, it cleared out a large area in the surrounding gas, either with strong wind or from an outburst late in its life. So the blast wave from the supernova itself could expand relatively unimpeded into this cleared area. However, once the blast wave hit the dense material surrounding it, the impact caused the system to glow brightly in X-ray and radio emission. The X-ray and radio emission from SN 1987A is probably fainter because the surrounding material is less compact.

SN 1987A used to be quite a mystery but with this new data answers are starting to come. And astronomers now think this type of pre explosion clear out could be quite common among dying massive stars. 1996cr not only helps answer questions about 1987A but also gives insight into the deaths of massive stars and the dynamics of what is exactly happening. Hopefully, now that we know what to look for, more of this types of events can be identified and studied.