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Distant galaxy regains title as oldest in universe

Wednesday - 12/12/2012, 3:50pm  ET

AP Science Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A galaxy once considered the oldest has reclaimed its title, scientists reported Wednesday.

Poring through Hubble Space Telescope photos, the team recalculated the galaxy's age and determined it is actually 13.3 billion years old _ not a mere 13.2 billion.


Now it's back on top after the team used a longer exposure time to get a clearer view of the earliest and far-off galaxies. Seeing the most distant galaxies is like looking back in time and this one existed when the universe was in its infancy _ about 380 million years old. More observations are needed to confirm the result, but astronomers think it's the best candidate to date.

Besides refining the galaxy's age, they found six more early ones.


The findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Scientists are excited about the bounty of early galaxies, which should help refine theories about the formation of the first stars and galaxies. Astronomers think galaxies started appearing about 200 million years after the Big Bang, the explosion believed to have created the universe 13.7 billion years ago. Our Milky Way _ one of hundreds of billions of galaxies _ formed about 10 billion years ago.

The new study adds further evidence that galaxies formed gradually over several hundred million years and not in a single burst.





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