texas a&m university and the university of texas at austin may be former football rivals but the lone star states two research giants have teamed up to detect the most distant spectroscopically confirmed galaxy ever found one created within 700 million years after the big bang the research is published in the most recent edition of the journal nature its exciting to know were the first people in the world to see this said vithal tilvi a texas a&m postdoctoral research associate and co-author of the paper which also is available via arxiv it raises interesting questions about the origins and the evolution of the universe (from left:) university of texas assistant professor steven finkelstein texas a&m postdoctoral researcher vithal tilvi and university of texas graduate student mimi song pictured in the observing room at wm keck observatory where they spent two nights last april the small monitors show what the group used to control mosfire while the large monitor on the left shows their view of the telescope operator finally the one behind finkelstein shows where the telescope is pointing as well as the current conditions (image courtesy of steven finkelstein) an artists rendition of the newly discovered most distant galaxy z8_gnd_5296 the galaxy looks red in the above hubble space telescope image (zoomed box) because the collective blue light from stars get shifted toward redder colors due to the expansion of the universe and its large distance from earth (image credit: v tilvi sl finkelstein c papovich and the hubble heritage team) the papers lead author is steven finkelstein an assistant professor at the university of texas at austin and 2011 hubble fellow who previously was a postdoctoral research associate at texas a&m under the mentorship of texas a&m astrophysicist casey papovich who is second author as well as current mentor to tilvi ten other international institutions collaborated on the effort from california to massachusetts and italy to israel the galaxy known by its catalog name z8_gnd_5296 fascinated the researchers whereas our home the milky way creates about one or two sun-like stars every year or so this newly discovered galaxy forms around 300 a year and was observed by the researchers as it was 13 billion years ago thats the time it took for the galaxys light to travel to earth just how mind-boggling is that a single light year which is the distance light travels in a year is nearly six trillion miles because the universe has been expanding the whole time the researchers estimate the galaxys present distance to be roughly 30 billion light years away because of its distance we get a glimpse of conditions when the universe was only about 700 million years old only 5 percent of its current age of 138 billion years said papovich an associate professor in the department of physics and astronomy and a member of the george p and cynthia woods mitchell institute for fundamental physics and astronomy since 2008 papovich notes that researchers are able to accurately gauge the distances of galaxies by measuring a feature from the ubiquitous element hydrogen called the lyman alpha transition which emits brightly in distant galaxies its detected in nearly all galaxies that are seen from a time more than one billion years from the big bang but getting closer than that the hydrogen emission line for some reason becomes increasingly difficult to see we were thrilled to see this galaxy finkelstein said and then our next thought was ‘why did we not see anything else were using the best instrument on the best telescope with the best galaxy sample we had the best weather it was gorgeous and still we only saw this emission line from one of our sample of 43 observed galaxies when we expected to see around six whats going on the researchers suspect they may have zeroed in on the era when the universe made its transition from an opaque state in which most of the hydrogen is neutral to a translucent state in which most of the hydrogen is ionized so its not necessarily that the distant galaxies arent there it could be that theyre hidden from detection behind a wall of neutral hydrogen fog which blocks the hydrogen emission signal tilvi notes this is one of two major changes in the fundamental essence of the universe since its beginning the other being a transition from a plasma state to a neutral state he is leading the effort on a follow-up paper that will use a sophisticated statistical analysis to explore that transition further everything seems to have changed since then tilvi said if it was neutral everywhere today the night sky that we see wouldnt be as beautiful what im working on is studying exactly why and exactly where this happened was this transition sudden or was it gradual the nature paper is the result of raw data gleaned from a powerful hubble space telescope imaging survey of the distant universe called candels or cosmic assembly near-infrared deep extragalactic legacy survey using that data the team was armed with 43 potential distant galaxies and set out to confirm their distances on a crisp clear april night tilvi finkelstein and his graduate student mimi song sat behind a panel of computers in the control room of the wm keck observatory which is perched atop the summit of hawaiis dormant mauna kea volcano and houses the two largest optical and infrared telescopes in the world each standing eight stories tall weighing 300 tons and equipped with 10-meter-wide mirrors they detected only one galaxy during their two nights of observation at keck but it turned out to be the most distant ever confirmed it was at a redshift 751 or created about 13 billion years ago because the universe is expanding the space between galaxies also is increasing and as objects move away they become redder in essence the higher the redshift the farther away the object only five other galaxies have ever been confirmed to have a redshift greater than 7 with the previous high being 7215 finkelstein credits technological advancements in recent years for allowing astronomers to probe deeper into space and closer to the big bang for instance a powerful new spectrometer called mosfire (multi-object spectrometer for infra-red exploration) that is 25 times more light-sensitive than others of its kind was installed at keck in 2012 and the hubble space telescope is powered by a new near-infrared camera installed by astronauts aboard the space shuttle in 2009 that sees farther into the universe finkelstein and papovichs collaboration to study distant galaxies and our cosmic evolution is one of several between texas two public research giants in the realm of astronomy texas a&m the university of texas at austin and other institutions are building the largest spectrograph in the world to be installed at the hobby-eberly telescope in west texas to shed light on the mysterious force dark energy that likely is driving the expansion of the universe perhaps the largest and most important collaboration between the two universities astronomy programs is on the giant magellan telescope which when complete in 2020 will create images 10 times sharper than the hubble space telescope and enable astronomers to see earlier into the universe than ever before texas a&m and the university of texas at austin are two of 10 international institutions that are founding partners on the project the giant magellan telescope will revolutionize this research papovich said we are pushing the current telescopes to their limits and only seeing the brightest galaxies at these redshifts it is slow-going with current telescopes the gmt will have about five times the light gathering power of the biggest telescopes were using now and it will make the measurements were doing that much easier it will probably take the gmt to really understand the conditions in the very early universe nicholas suntzeff director of the texas a&m astronomy program said the university of texas at austin has been instrumental in helping to boost the college station programs international profile and providing access to telescopes and facilities suntzeff who this year was appointed texas a&ms highest faculty rank distinguished professor himself serves as an adjunct professor at the university of texas at austin if we want to maintain texas as one of the most important centers in the world for astronomy we can no longer do it as individual universities suntzeff said ut texas a&m and other universities must work together just as a strength of the university of california program is that its system is united if we are going to be part of the biggest projects in the world we must unite our forces this is the only way we can rejoin the group of elite astronomical institutions that are doing the best science on the biggest telescopes in texas we are on that path to learn more about this research which is supported by nasa through the hubble space telescope science institute (stsci) and texas a&m astronomy visit astronomy research page for more information about the texas a&m mitchell institute go to http://mitchelltamuedu/ to learn more about astronomy at the university of texas at austin visit http://wwwasutexasedu/ # # # # # # # # # # about 12 impacts of the 12th man: 12 impacts of the 12th man is an ongoing series throughout the year highlighting the significant contributions of texas a&m university students faculty staff and former students on their community state nation and world to learn more about the series and see additional impacts visit http://12thmantamuedu/ about research at texas a&m university: as one of the worlds leading research institutions texas a&m is in the vanguard in making significant contributions to the storehouse of knowledge including that of science and technology research conducted at texas a&m represents annual expenditures of more than $776 million that research creates new knowledge that provides basic fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state nation and world to learn more visit http://vprtamuedu -atm- contact: vimal patel (979) 845-7246 or vpatel@sciencetamuedu; casey papovich (979) 862-2704 or papovich@tamuedu; steven finkelstein (512) 471-1483 or stevenf@astroasutexasedu; vithal tilvi (979) 862-2105 or tilvi@physicstamuedu