Mysterious space blob discovered at cosmic dawn

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 - 15:21 in Astronomy & Space

A team of astronomers, led by Carnegie's Masami Ouchi, have discovered a mysterious, giant object that existed when the universe was only 800 million years old. Dubbed an extended "Lyman-Alpha blob," it is a huge body of gas. It is named Himiko for a legendary Japanese queen and stretches for 55 thousand light years, a record for that early point in time. Its length is comparable to the radius of the Milky Way's disk.

Read the whole article on Physorg

More from Physorg

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net