domingo, 30 de enero de 2011

Profesores de Biologia en USA se rehusan a enseñar la teoria de la Evolucion

Esto explica como un pais inmensamente rico es a la vez inmensamente ignorante...en virtud de un fallo incompensible de la Corte Suprema de Justicia...lo que hace a E.U.A.en la practica un estado teocratico...

 High School Biology Teachers in U.S. Reluctant to Endorse Evolution in Class, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Jan. 28, 2011) — The majority of public high school biology teachers in the U.S. are not strong classroom advocates of evolutionary biology, despite 40 years of court cases that have ruled teaching creationism or intelligent design violates the Constitution, according to Penn State political scientists. A mandatory undergraduate course in evolutionary biology for prospective teachers, and frequent refresher courses for current teachers, may be part of the solution, they say.
"Considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America's classrooms," write Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, professors of political science at Penn State, in the January 28 issue of Science.
The researchers examined data from the National Survey of High School Biology Teachers, a representative sample of 926 public high school biology instructors. They found only about 28 percent of those teachers consistently implement National Research Council recommendations calling for introduction of evidence that evolution occurred, and craft lesson plans with evolution as a unifying theme linking disparate topics in biology.
In contrast, Berkman and Plutzer found that about 13 percent of biology teachers "explicitly advocate creationism or intelligent design by spending at least one hour of class time presenting it in a positive light." Many of these teachers typically rejected the possibility that scientific methods can shed light on the origin of the species, and considered both evolution and creationism as belief systems that cannot be fully proven or discredited.
Berkman and Plutzer dubbed the remaining teachers the "cautious 60 percent," who are neither strong advocates for evolutionary biology nor explicit endorsers of nonscientific alternatives. "Our data show that these teachers understandably want to avoid controversy," they said.
The researchers found these teachers commonly use one or more of three strategies to avoid controversy. Some teach evolutionary biology as if it applies only to molecular biology, ignoring an opportunity to impart a rich understanding of the diversity of species and evidence that one species gives rise to others.
Using a second strategy, some teachers rationalize the teaching of evolution by referring to high-stakes examinations.
These teachers "tell students it does not matter if they really 'believe' in evolution, so long as they know it for the test," Berkman and Plutzer said.
Finally, many teachers expose their students to all positions, scientific and otherwise, and let them make up their own minds.
This is unfortunate, the researchers said, because "this approach tells students that well established concepts can be debated in the same way we debate personal opinions."
Berkman and Plutzer conclude that "the cautious 60 percent fail to explain the nature of scientific inquiry, undermine the authority of established experts, and legitimize creationist arguments." As a result, "they may play a far more important role in hindering scientific literacy in the United States than the smaller number of explicit creationists."
The researchers note that more high school students take biology than any other science course, and for as many as 25 percent of high school students it is the only science course they will ever take, even though a sound science education is important in a democracy that depends on citizen input on highly technical, consequential, public policies.
Berkman and Plutzer say the nation must have better-trained biology teachers who can confidently advocate for high standards of science education in their local communities. Colleges and universities should mandate a dedicated undergraduate course in evolution for all prospective biology teachers, for example, and follow up with outreach refresher courses, so that more biology teachers embrace evolutionary biology.
"Combined with continued successes in courtrooms and the halls of state government, this approach offers our best chance of increasing the scientific literacy of future generations," they conclude.
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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Penn State.

Journal Reference:
  1. M. B. Berkman, E. Plutzer. Defeating Creationism in the Courtroom, But Not in the Classroom. Science, 2011; 331 (6016): 404 DOI: 10.1126/science.1198902
APA

MLA
Penn State (2011, January 28). High school biology teachers in U.S. reluctant to endorse evolution in class, study finds. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 30, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2011/01/110127141657.htm
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

viernes, 28 de enero de 2011

Model predicts 'religiosity gene' will dominate society

Model predicts 'religiosity gene' will dominate society

January 28, 2011 By Lisa Zyga Model predicts 'religiosity gene' will dominate societyEnlarge
A variety of religious symbols. A new study has investigated how the differing fertility rates between religious and secular individuals might affect the genetic evolution of society overall. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.
(PhysOrg.com) -- In the past 20 years, the Amish population in the US has doubled, increasing from 123,000 in 1991 to 249,000 in 2010. The huge growth stems almost entirely from the religious culture’s high fertility rate, which is about 6 children per woman, on average. At this rate, the Amish population will reach 7 million by 2100 and 44 million by 2150. On the other hand, the growth may not continue if future generations of Amish choose to defect from the religion and if secular influences reduce the birth rate. In a new study, Robert Rowthorn, emeritus professor of economics at Cambridge University, has looked at the broader picture underlying this particular example: how will the high fertility rates of religious people throughout the world affect the future of human genetic evolution, and therefore the biological makeup of society?
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Rowthorn has developed a model that shows that the genetic components that predispose a person toward religion are currently “hitchhiking” on the back of the religious cultural practice of high fertility rates. Even if some of the people who are born to religious parents defect from religion and become secular, the religious genes they carry (which encompass other personality traits, such as obedience and conservativism) will still spread throughout society, according to the model’s numerical simulations.
“Provided the fertility of religious people remains on average higher than that of secular people, the genes that predispose people towards religion will spread,” Rowthorn told PhysOrg.com. “The bigger the fertility differential between religious and secular people, the faster this genetic transformation will occur. This does not mean that everyone will become religious. Genes are not destiny. Many people who are genetically predisposed towards religion may in fact lead secular lives because of the cultural influences they have been exposed to.”
The model’s assumptions are based on data from previous research. Studies have shown that, even controlling for income and education, people who are more religious have more children, on average, than people who are secular (defined here as having a religious indifference). According to the World Values Survey for 82 countries, adults attending religious services more than once per week averaged 2.5 children, those attending once per month averaged 2.01 children, and those never attending averaged 1.67 children. The more orthodox the religious sect, the higher the fertility rate, with sects such as the Amish, the Hutterites, and Haredi having up to four times as many children as the secular average. Studies have found that the high fertility rates stem from cultural and social influences by religious organizations rather than biological factors.
But while fertility is determined by culture, an individual’s predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics, in addition to their upbringing. In the model, Rowthorn uses a “religiosity gene” to represent the various genetic factors that combine to genetically predispose a person toward religion, whether remaining religious from youth or converting to religion from a secular upbringing. On the flip side, the nonreligiosity allele of this “gene” makes a person more likely to remain or become secular. If both parents have the religiosity allele, their children are also more likely to have the religiosity allele than if one or both parents did not have it. However, children born to religious parents may have the nonreligiosity allele, while children born to secular parents may have the religiosity allele. Having the religiosity allele does not make a person religious, but it makes a person more likely to have characteristics that make them religiously inclined; the converse is also true.

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All individuals, whether they have religious or secular upbringings, have a chance of defecting. Rowthorn explained that the rates of defection from religious to secular and from secular to religious preferences depend on time and place.
“Amongst Christian Churches in Europe and North America, defection rates are higher than conversion rates,” he said. “In some cases, such as the Amish, these losses are greatly outweighed by their very high fertility. However, for mainstream Churches, such as the Catholics or Anglicans, the birth rate is not high enough on its own to offset defections and they rely on immigration to maintain their numbers. In certain other parts of the world, such as East Asia, mainstream Christian Churches are growing through conversion.”
Rowthorn’s model shows that, even when the religious defection rate is high, the overall high fertility rate of religious people will cause the religiosity allele to eventually predominate the global society. The model shows that the wide gap in fertility rates could have a significant genetic effect in just a few generations. The model predicts that the religious fraction of the population will eventually stabilize at less than 100%, and there will remain a possibly large percentage of secular individuals. But nearly all of the secular population will still carry the religious allele, since high defection rates will spread the religious allele to secular when defectors have children with a secular partner. Overall, nearly all of the population will have a genetic predisposition toward religion, although some or many of these individuals will lead secular lives, Rowthorn concluded.
“The rate at which religious people abandon their faith affects the eventual share of the population who are religious,” Rowthorn said. “However, it does not alter the conclusion of the article that the religiosity allele will eventually take over. If the defection rate is high, there will be lots of children who are brought up as religious and carry the religiosity allele, but who give up their faith. Such people will carry the religiosity allele into the secular population with them. Many of their descendents will also carry this allele and be secular. In this case, the high fertility group is constantly sending migrants into the low-fertility secular population. Such migrations will simultaneously boost the size of the secular population and transform its genetic composition.”
Rowthorn acknowledges that he can only speculate on how a genetic predisposition toward religion may manifest itself in a secular context. Previous research has suggested that a genetic predisposition toward religion is tied to a variety of characteristics such as conservatism, obedience to authority, and the inclination to follow rituals. In this instance of evolution, it’s possible that these characteristics may become widespread not for their own fitness but by hitching a ride with a high-fitness cultural practice.
More information: Robert Rowthorn. “Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B. DOI:10.1098/rspb.2010.2504
Fuente: Copyright 2010 PhysOrg.com.
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or part without the express written permission of PhysOrg.com.

Seminario sobre George Lemaitre,padre de la Teoria del Big Bang

Mié, 26/01/2011 - 09:39

“El relativismo es el cáncer de la ciencia: si no se tiene fe en lo que se busca, difícilmente se puede acceder a ello”

Eduardo Riaza, miembro de la Real Sociedad Española de Física, impartió un seminario sobre el padre de la Teoría del Big Bang, organizado por el Grupo de Investigación “Ciencia, Razón y Fe” de la Universidad de Navarra

Eduardo Riaza
Eduardo Riaza.
Foto: Manuel Castells
Eduardo Riaza Molina, miembro de la Real Sociedad Española de Física y profesor de Física y Química en el Colegio Retamar de Madrid, impartió un seminario del Grupo de Investigación “Ciencia, Razón y Fe” de la Universidad de Navarra.
En la sesión sobre “El Universo de George Lemaître”, repasó el perfil y aportaciones de este astrofísico y sacerdote católico, padre de la Teoría del Big Bang. Eduardo Riaza ha publicado recientemente la primera biografía en castellano de este científico bajo el título La historia del comienzo.
Blog de Eduardo Riaza sobre Georges Lemaître

-Grandes investigadores como Lemaître estuvieron muy influidos por la Filosofía. ¿Percibe también esta tendencia en los científicos actuales o hay una deficiencia en su formación y la perspectiva en este sentido?

El campo es muy amplio. Algunos científicos obvian la Filosofía y otros la tienen en cuenta, pero quizá su formación en este campo dista mucho de la Filosofía realista de Tomás de Aquino que tenía presente Lemaître. Ésta le permitió llegar a un buen ajuste entre las hipótesis teóricas propuestas por Einstein y las observaciones astronómicas. El relativismo que a veces se ve en la ciencia o en los científicos es el cáncer de la ciencia: si no se tiene fe en lo que se busca, difícilmente se puede acceder a ello.

-La Teoría del Big Bang fue propuesta por Lemaître, un sacerdote católico. Sin embargo, actualmente algunos piensan que es contraria a la existencia de Dios. ¿Cómo se ha producido esta paradoja?

Georges Lemaître es muy poco conocido; de hecho, prácticamente no hay referencias sobre él en las bibliotecas españolas, tal y como constaté cuando escribí su biografía. Quienes han trabajado en el mismo terreno que él evitan nombrarle. Esto quizá se deba a un prejuicio religioso y, especialmente, ante el católico. No obstante, tampoco es adecuado convertirle en un abanderado de la apologética, tal y como él rechazó. Así lo demuestra el hecho de que escribiera a los colaboradores del Papa Pío XII tras un discurso de éste en el que daba a entender que la teoría de Lemaître apoyaba la idea de la Creación. No quería mezclar ambos aspectos.
Lemaitre y Einstein
George Lemaître y Albert Einstein.
Foto: Cedida
- Lemaître fue un ejemplo de vocación científica temprana. ¿Cuál es la fórmula para despertarla entre los jóvenes? ¿Es posible hacerlo sólo desde los aspectos más técnicos?

Hoy en día existe una gran falta de vocaciones científicas y se están empleando muchos recursos para resolverlo. El problema es que, ante esa dificultad, se da una respuesta equivocada: la ciencia fácil, accesible para todos. Hay que divulgar, pero no rebajando el nivel ni perdiendo rigor. De hecho, habría que elevar los estudios. La tendencia de las leyes de educación es igualar por abajo. Así, la atención a la diversidad se suele centrar en los que van mal, descuidando a aquellos que destacan. Por otro lado, pienso que no se debe hacer división entre ciencias y letras: desde edades tempranas se tendría que potenciar la lectura, la contemplación de la naturaleza, o el disfrute del teatro. Si aludimos a las vidas de científicos como Einstein o Lemaître, entre otros, vemos que además de esa faceta tenían otra humanística; tocaban algún instrumento musical, eran artistas...

-Con Lemaître se demuestra que excelencia científica y fe son compatibles. ¿Qué puede enseñar su figura a los científicos de hoy?

Aunque su personalidad fue muy rica, destacaría su sentido del humor y, especialmente, su amor a la verdad. Además, nunca tuvo prejuicios: planteó un modelo infinito en el tiempo que era, supuestamente para algunos, incompatible con la revelación. Pero como filosóficamente no veía inconvenientes, no tuvo problemas en admitirlo. Esa libertad de pensamiento puede ser un gran ejemplo para otros.

-¿Qué papel deben tener en la sociedad los científicos católicos?

En primer lugar, tienen que ser muy buenos científicos. Luego resulta vital que se impliquen en la divulgación. Ésta no da tanto prestigio como la publicación en revistas especializadas, pero tiene gran impacto en la sociedad. El concepto que puede tener el ciudadano de a pie de lo que es la ciencia se aleja de lo que ésta es en realidad. Además, sus creencias están teñidas de la moda New Age y de supersticiones o aspectos paracientíficos que no tienen ninguna entidad. Por ejemplo, se cree con más fuerza en cosas como la ‘energía positiva’ que en la ciencia empírica o en Dios.

-¿Cómo calificaría la divulgación científica que se hace en la actualidad?

Por un lado, en muchas ocasiones se usa para atacar a la Iglesia desde algunos aspectos o, al menos, busca la confrontación. Por ejemplo, salen a colación casos como el de Galileo, vistos desde una perspectiva sesgada. Sin hacer una cruzada, hay que exponer las cosas para que la historia se escriba con objetividad. No hay que generar polémicas ni reivindicaciones, pero sí ser justos con los protagonistas, evitando los prejuicios.
Adjuntos: 

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A Galaxy when Galaxies Were Young

A Galaxy when Galaxies Were Young

News media worldwide are reporting today on a new “farthest galaxy ever found,” courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope, but the discovery is not quite as definite as it’s being made out. In a study characterized more by a process of elimination than positive identification, the astronomers involved estimate that there’s about an 80% chance they've got it right.

Zooming in on UDFj-39546284
UDFj-39546284 as seen in Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2009-2010, taken with the aid of Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3. Click image for wider view.
NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth and R. Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz), and the HUDF09 Team.
If their interpretation is correct, light from the tiny, faint galaxy has undergone a redshift of 10.3, meaning the light has been en route to Earth for 13.2 billion years. In looking at this galaxy “We’ve gone back through 96 percent of the life of the universe to 500 million years after the Big Bang,” said Garth Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), who reported the discovery with Rychard Bouwens (University of Leiden) in the January 27th Nature. The object, designated UDFj-39546284 for its location in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, seems to be just 1% of the size of the Milky Way — typical of the mini-galaxies that presumably filled the early universe. It was visible only at the longest infrared wavelength that Hubble can detect (1.7 microns). “We’re really pushing Hubble to its limits here,” Illingworth said.

With more than 40 hours of exposure time on Hubble’s recently installed Wide Field Camera 3, the team created what Bouwens called “the deepest near-infrared image ever obtained.” Still, the object was so faint that team could not get a spectrum of its light to analyze, the surest way to determine a redshift. They had to rely instead on a photometric redshift estimate, based on comparing the amount of light coming through several of the camera’s wide-spectrum color filters. From such information astronomers can piece together a very rough approximation of the object’s spectrum, though without the narrow spectral lines astronomers usually rely on to measure redshift accurately.

That’s where the process of elimination came in. Since astronomers were limited to a rough approximation of spectrum, there was a much greater risk of misinterpreting the data. With only a photometric level of detail, different types of objects may show the same spectral profile. “You have to make a leap of faith and you ask yourself, ‘What else can it be?’ ” said Rogier Windhorst, a professor at the Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.

According to Windhorst, the mostly likely alternative explanation in this case would be a less distant galaxy reddened by dust. “These galaxies have a spectrum somewhat similar to the source,” Bouwens said. “But only somewhat similar.”

Zoomed-in view of UDFj-39546284
Zoomed-in image of UDFj-39546284, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth and R. Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz), and the HUDF09 Team.
This object showed a very unusual profile, with light only showing up in the reddest filter of the camera’s seven. That’s why both Bouwens and Windhorst are fairly confident they’re really seeing an incredibly distant galaxy; a dusty galaxy closer to home would probably show some emission at other wavelengths. Other interpretations are “not impossible, but not very likely,” Windhorst said.

Observations of ultra-high-redshift galaxies provide important constraints for theories of how the first galaxies formed. Though the Hubble image shows this object as just a tiny smudge, its miniature size itself holds important information about primeval galaxies. The team also concluded that “star birth at 500 million years [after the Big Bang] was astonishingly less than starburst at 600 million years,” Illingworth said.

“For the first time now, we can make realistic statements about how the galaxy population changed during this period,” said Bouwens.

NASA press release.

The researchers' paper.

Posted by Jessica Kloss, January 27, 2011

jueves, 27 de enero de 2011

Busqueda de Materia negra en el LHC , Cerca de obtener..?

Hunt for dark matter closes in at Large Hadron Collider

January 26, 2011 Hunt for dark matter closes in at Large Hadron Collider
One of the earliest CMS events found showing evidence of two jets. The blue and red columns represent energy deposited in the detector, while the yellow curved lines are measured tracks of particles.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists are closer than ever to finding the source of the Universe's mysterious dark matter, following a better than expected year of research at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) particle detector, part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva.
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The scientists have now carried out the first full run of experiments that smash protons together at almost the speed of light. When these sub-atomic particles collide at the heart of the CMS detector, the resultant energies and densities are similar to those that were present in the first instants of the Universe, immediately after the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. The unique conditions created by these collisions can lead to the production of new particles that would have existed in those early instants and have since disappeared.
The researchers say they are well on their way to being able to either confirm or rule out one of the primary theories that could solve many of the outstanding questions of particle physics, known as Supersymmetry (SUSY). Many hope it could be a valid extension for the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes the interactions of known with astonishing precision but fails to incorporate general relativity, dark matter and dark energy.
Dark matter is an invisible substance that we cannot detect directly but whose presence is inferred from the rotation of galaxies. Physicists believe that it makes up about a quarter of the mass of the Universe whilst the ordinary and visible matter only makes up about 5% of the mass of the Universe. Its composition is a mystery, leading to intriguing possibilities of hitherto undiscovered physics.
Professor Geoff Hall from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, who works on the CMS experiment, said: "We have made an important step forward in the hunt for dark matter, although no discovery has yet been made. These results have come faster than we expected because the and CMS ran better last year than we dared hope and we are now very optimistic about the prospects of pinning down Supersymmetry in the next few years."
The energy released in proton-proton collisions in CMS manifests itself as particles that fly away in all directions. Most collisions produce known particles but, on rare occasions, new ones may be produced, including those predicted by SUSY – known as supersymmetric particles, or 'sparticles'. The lightest sparticle is a natural candidate for dark matter as it is stable and CMS would only 'see' these objects through an absence of their signal in the detector, leading to an imbalance of energy and momentum.

Fuente: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-dark-large-hadron-collider.html

La Galaxia mas temprana despues del Big Bang, a 13.2 mil millones de años

  27-Jan-2011 15:38:16 UT

Hubble finds a new contender for galaxy distance record

26 Jan 2011
Pushing the Hubble Space Telescope to the limit of its technical ability, an international collaboration of astronomers have found what is likely to be the most distant and ancient galaxy ever seen, whose light has taken 13.2 billion years to reach us (a redshift of around 10).
Astronomers have pushed the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to its limits by finding what is plausibly the most distant and ancient object in the Universe [1] ever seen. Its light has travelled for 13.2 billion years to reach Hubble [2], which corresponds to a redshift around 10. The age of the Universe is 13.7 billion years.

The galaxy UDFj-39546284 may be the most distant, ancient object in the Universe. It appears as a faint red blob in this ultra deep field exposure taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Copyright: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz, and Leiden University) and the HUDF09 Team
The dim object, called UDFj-39546284, is likely to be a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed 480 million years after the Big Bang, only four per cent of the Universe's current age. It is tiny. Over one hundred such mini-galaxies would be needed to make up our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
This galaxy would be more distant than the population of redshift 8 galaxies recently discovered in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, including the current most distant spectroscopically confirmed [3] record holder at a redshift of 8.6, and the redshift 8.2 gamma-ray burst from 2009. A redshift of z = 8.6 means that the object is seen as it was around 600 million years after the Big Bang.
"We're seeing huge changes in the rate of star birth that tell us that if we go a little further back in time we're going to see even more dramatic changes," says Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz.
The astronomers were surprised, as this new result suggests that the rate at which galaxies were forming stars grew precipitously, increasing by a factor of ten over the 170 million years that elapsed between the era of this newly discovered candidate galaxy and that of the population of previously identified galaxies at a redshift around 8 (650 million years after the Big Bang).
"These observations provide us with our best insights yet into the likely nature of the earlier generation of primeval objects that we are yet to find," adds Rychard Bouwens of Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Astronomers don't know exactly when the first stars appeared in the Universe, but every step further from Earth takes them deeper into the early Universe's formative years when stars and galaxies were just beginning to emerge in the aftermath of the Big Bang [4].
"We're moving into a regime where there are big changes afoot. Another couple of hundred million years back towards the Big Bang, and that will be the time when the first galaxies really are starting to build up," says Illingworth.
Bouwens and Illingworth are reporting the discovery in the 27 January issue of the British science journal Nature.
The even more distant proto-galaxies that the team expects are out there will require the infrared vision of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is the successor to Hubble. Planned for launch later this decade, JWST will provide the spectroscopic measurements that will confirm today's report of the object's tremendous distance.
A year of detailed analysis was required before the object was identified in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field - Infrared (HUDF-IR) data taken in the late summers of 2009 and 2010. The object appears as a faint dot of starlight in the Hubble exposures, and although its individual stars canft be resolved by Hubble, the evidence suggests that this is a compact galaxy of hot stars that first started to form over 100-200 million years earlier, from gas trapped in a pocket of dark matter.
The proto-galaxy is only visible at the longest infrared wavelengths observable by Hubble. This means that the expansion of the Universe has stretched and thereby reddened its light more than that of any other galaxy previously identified in the HUDF-IR, taking it to the very limit that Hubble can detect. JWST will go deeper into infrared wavelengths and will be at least an order of magnitude more sensitive than Hubble, allowing it to hunt more efficiently for primeval galaxies at even greater distances, at earlier times, closer to the Big Bang.

Notes for editors

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
[1] The international team of astronomers in this study consists of R. J. Bouwens (Leiden University and University of California, Santa Cruz), G. D. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), I. Labbe (Carnegie Observatories), P. A. Oesch (ETH Zurich), M. Trenti (University of Colorado), C. M. Carollo (ETH Zurich), P. G. van Dokkum (Yale University), M. Franx (Leiden University), M. Stiavelli (Space Telescope Science Institute), V. González (University of California, Santa Cruz), D. Magee (University of California, Santa Crux) and L. Bradley (Space Telescope Science Institute)
[2] Astronomers plumb the depths of the Universe, and probe its history, by measuring how much the light from an object has been stretched by the expansion of space. This is called the redshift value or z. In general, the greater the observed z value for a galaxy, the more distant it is in time and space, as observed from our position in the Milky Way. Before Hubble was launched, astronomers could only see galaxies out to a z of approximately 1, corresponding to an era halfway through the history of the Universe. The original Hubble Deep Field, taken in 1995, leapfrogged to z = 4, or roughly 90 per cent of the way back to the beginning of time. The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) produced the Hubble Ultra Deep Field of 2004, pushing back the limit to z ~ 6. ACS was installed on Hubble during Servicing Mission 3B in 2002. Hubble's first infrared camera, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer reached out to z = 7. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) first took us back to z ~ 8, and has now plausibly penetrated back for the first time to z = 10. The James Webb Space Telescope is expected to extend this back to a z of approximately 15, 275 million years after the Big Bang, and possibly beyond. The very first stars may have formed between z's of 30 and 15.
[3] Likely candidates for distant galaxies can be identified and have their redshift estimated by carefully studying them in Hubble images taken through a range of different filters. The galaxy will be visible only in some of the filters. An estimate of the redshift can be deduced from the colour of the last filter in which the object is detected (a technique known as photometric redshift). However, redshifts can only be confirmed through spectroscopic study, in which the light from a galaxy is split into its constituent wavelengths for analysis. This newly discovered candidate galaxy is too faint to be studied spectroscopically by any telescope in operation today, but the forthcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope will be equipped to do so.
[4] The hypothesised hierarchical growth of galaxies — from stellar clumps to majestic spirals and ellipticals — didn't become evident until the Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field exposures. The first 500 million years of the Universe's existence, from a z of 1000 to 10 is now the missing chapter in the story of the hierarchical growth of galaxies. It's not clear how the Universe assembled structure out of a darkening, cooling fireball of the Big Bang. As with a developing embryo, astronomers know there must have been an early period of rapid changes that would set the initial conditions which made the Universe of galaxies what it is today.

Contacts

Garth Illingworth University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Tel: +1-831-459-2843
Email: gdiucolick.org
Rychard BouwensLeiden University, Netherlands and University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Tel: +1-831-459-5276
Email: bouwensucolick.org
Oli UsherHubble/ESA, Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6855
Email: oushereso.org
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA
Tel: +1-410-338-4514
Email: villardstsci.edu