"Out There"---Most-Distant Known Galaxy Detected
An international team of astronomers has confirmed the most-distant known galaxy, GN-z11s, a hefty13.4 billion light years away, indicating it was shining just 400 million years or so after the Big Bang, along with a brief ultraviolet flare of a powerful gamma ray burst–a phenomenon never before observed in the extremely early universe–that was detected in data from the Keck 1 telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The astronomers used deep spectroscopic analysis, discovering an unusual higher-than-expected concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, ruling ...