Farthest Galaxy Yet Revealed by Cosmic Lens

The earliest known confirmed galaxy has been discovered with the help of cosmic lenses formed out of the warped fabric of space and time, researchers say.

This distant, ancient galaxy may have once helped clear out the murky fog that once filled the early universe, scientists added.

Astronomers estimate that the universe began about 13.7 billion years ago during the Big Bang. Recent findings suggest the first galaxies formed less than 500 million years after the universe's birth.

Little is known about the earliest galaxies since their light is very faint, given how far away they are. One tool researchers can use to peer at these galaxies are so-called gravitational lenses, magnifying glasses resulting from the warped fabric of reality.

Gravity curves space-time; the greater the mass of an object in space, the stronger its gravitational pull. This, in turn, bends light around it, affecting how telescopes on Earth view it. 

Astronomers can gauge the age of an object by estimating its distance. Since the speed of light appears the same throughout the universe, knowing how far away an object is reveals how long it took for its light to get here. Scientists can work out the distance of an object by looking at how much the light from it is distorted.

Using gravitational lensing caused by one of the most massive known galaxy clusters, scientists glimpsed a galaxy that existed when the universe was about 500 million years old using two NASA space observatories: the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Based on its level of development, the researchers estimate this galaxy is about 150 million times the mass of the sun and formed less than 200 million years after the Big Bang. This is currently the earliest known and most distant galaxy that scientists have confidently identified.

"We feel like archaeologists with a pre-Neanderthal fossil in hand," lead study author Wei Zheng, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University, told SPACE.com.

Astronomers have detected potentially older galaxies, but their faintness makes it difficult to make out key details regarding their age.

"Such a discovery would not have been possible if the object was un-lensed," Zheng said.

The age of this galaxy reveals it formed during the so-called "epoch of reionization" that occurred about 150 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang. This critical but still largely mysterious event occurred when intense ultraviolet radiation cleared the fog of atomic hydrogen that once pervaded the cosmos by ionizing it into its constituent protons and electrons.

"This provides us with a unique glimpse of star formation and galaxy growth in the period spanning 300 [million] to 500 million years after the Big Bang," astronomer Daniel Stark at the University of Arizona at Tucson. "While caution should be exercised in the interpretation of a single object, the results presented in the Zheng paper point to significant star formation activity throughout this period."

Much remains uncertain as to what sources of radiation caused the epoch of reionization. Since the researchers found this ancient galaxy after only monitoring a small patch of sky, Zheng said the early universe may have overall been rich with galaxies that drove reionization.

The scientists detailed their findings in the Sept. 20 issue of the journal Nature.

McLaren P1 supercar

Welcome the McLaren P1 -- the British maker's first supercar since the all-dominating F1 of the 1990s, and from the first trio of photos McLaren released today, the P1 will be one of the most striking vehicles on the road just sitting still. We don't know yet how much power it packs or how well it will perform, but McLaren promises the P1 will be nothing less than the best, ever.
Known as McLaren designer Frank Stephenson's first clean-sheet design for McLaren after the MP4-12C, the P1 is expected to combine the 3.8-liter V8 from the MP4-12C with some kind of hybrid system that could approach 1,000 hp total. In a statement, McLaren managing director Antony Sherriff says the P1 will be "the most exciting, most capable, most technologically advanced and most dynamically accomplished supercar ever made -- not necessarily to be the fastest in absolute top speed but to be the quickest and most rewarding series production road car on a circuit."

The rest of the details will be unveiled in Paris next Thursday, with the production model expected about a year from now.

Forbes: The most beautiful cars of 2012

Vintage cars like a Ferrari 250, the E-Type Jaguar and the original Porsche 911 have always been prototypes of automotive beauty. But there are some new models on the market today that can stand up to the handsome rides of old. Such specimens as the brand-new Jaguar F-Type, the sultry Ferrari 458 Spider, and the obscure Zenvo ST1 Supercar made our list of the most beautiful cars of 2012. 

Ferrari 458 Spider
Feast your eyes on the world's first hardtop convertible mid-engine supercar. This $257,000 stunner has a V8, rear-wheel drive engine and goes 0-60mph in 3.3 seconds. With the roof up, the car looks just like the stunning Italia. With the ultra-light hardtop down, it is the hottest convertible on the market today.

Electronic supercar unveiled

Croatian concept car manufacturer Rimac Automobili is preparing to unveil a prototype of their Concept One electric supercar at the upcoming Salon Prive luxury car show in London in early September.

Gorgeous Cosmic 'Superbubble' Observed by X-Ray Space Telescope

This superbubble in the N44 nebula inside the Large Magellanic Cloud was carved out by exploding stars. The photo, released in August 2012, comes from the Chandra X-ray Space Telescope, combined with data collected by observatories

Exploding stars carve out gas cavities called superbubbles in a nearby dwarf galaxy, as shown in a new photo from the Chandra space telescope.

This photo reveals a superbubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way, that lies roughly 160,000 light-years away from Earth.

Chandra's X-ray observations are shown here in blue light, which represents hot regions. The red light in the photo is from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which sees infrared light from areas containing dust and cooler gas. Meanwhile, optical light is shown here in yellow in observations from the 2.2-meter Max-Planck-ESO telescope in Chile, which sees ultraviolet radiation from hot, young stars.

Combining all these wavelengths, this composite picture helps give astronomers a fuller understanding of this dynamic region. Many of the bright stars belong to the star cluster NGC 1929, which is embedded in the nebula N44, inside the Large Magellanic Cloud.

R-SPACE CONCEPT CAR

R-Space, unveiled at the 2011 Geneva Motor show, is the third concept car to be completed under the direction of Laurens van den Acker. It represents the "Family" stage in the company’s new life-cycle Design strategy. With a silhouette that is both sporty and sculptural and a playful interior, R-Space proves that a MPV can be cunning and innovative. It is also environment-friendly, as it is powered by a petrol concept engine that previews the new range of modular TCe engines, Energy TCe, that will be launched by Renault in 2012.

Supersonic Flying Wing Nabs $100,000 from NASA

A flying wing aircraft design resembling a ninja star can turn 90 degrees in midair to go into supersonic mode.

An aircraft that resembles a four-point ninja star could go into supersonic mode by simply turning 90 degrees in midair. The unusual "flying wing" concept has won $100,000 in NASA funding to trying becoming a reality for future passenger jet travel.

The supersonic, bidirectional flying wing idea comes from a team headed by Ge-Cheng Zha, an aerospace engineer at the University of Miami. He said the fuel-efficient aircraft could reach supersonic speeds without the thunderclap sound produced by a sonic boom — a major factor that previously limited where the supersonic Concorde passenger jet could fly over populated land masses.

"I am hoping to develop an environmentally friendly and economically viable airplane for supersonic civil transport in the next 20 to 30 years," Zha said. "Imagine flying from New York to Tokyo in four hours instead of 15 hours."

Space Sugar Discovered Around Sun-Like Star

This image shows the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region in infrared light, as seen by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WISE). IRAS 16293-2422 is the red object in the center of the small square.

glycolaldehyde

What a sweet cosmic find! Sugar molecules have been found in the gas surrounding a young sun-like star, suggesting that some of the building blocks of life may actually be present even as alien planets are still forming in the system.

The young star, called IRAS 16293-2422, is part of a binary (or two-star) system. It has a similar mass to the sun and is located about 400 light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus. The sugar molecules, known as glycolaldehyde, have previously been detected in interstellar space, but according to the researchers, this is the first time they have been spotted so close to a sun-like star.

In fact, the molecules are about the same distance away from the star as the planet Uranus is from our sun.

Two Alien Planets Found with Twin Suns Like "Star Wars''

A twin star system that is home to two planets. The planets have two suns like the fictional planet Tatooine in the "Star Wars" universe.

Astronomers have for the first time discovered two alien planets whirling around a pair of stars: a complete solar system with twin suns just like Luke Skywalker's fictional home world Tatooine.

Most stars like our sun are not singletons, but rather come in pairs that orbit each other. Scientists had found planets in these binary systems, so-called circumbinary planets with two suns like Tatooine in the "Star Wars" universe.

To find more circumbinary planets, astronomers analyzed data from NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which has detected more than 2,300 potential alien worlds since its March 2009 launch. Kepler had to date detected four systems with circumbinary planets — Kepler-16, 34, 35 and 38.

The scientists have now announced the detection of Kepler-47, the first system seen with multiple worlds encircling a pair of stars. The star and its planets, called Kepler-47b and Kepler-47c, dwell about 5,000 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. 

"Kepler-47 shows us that binary stars can have close-in planetary systems, just like the ones we see in single stars," study lead author Jerome Orosz at San Diego State University told SPACE.com. "Most of the stars in the galaxy are in binary or higher-order multiple systems, so the fact that planetary systems can exist in these types of systems is important. If we were restricted to looking for planets around single stars, we would be missing most of the stars in the galaxy."

Brown : The red-hot color for new cars and trucks

Silver was the most popular exterior car color in America for nearly a decade. But while it remains beloved by automotive designers for best showing off a car's styling, its unstinting argent reign was finally overthrown this year. By white. According to Sandy McGill, BMW Designworks' lead designer in color, materials, and finish, this is Steve Jobs' doing. "Prior to Apple, white was associated with things like refrigerators or the tiles in your bathroom. Apple made white valuable."

Valuable, yet boring. So while the rise in white's snowy stock may be good news for the luxury market — white is high maintenance, thus luxurious — it's a pale palliative for those of us with a bit more pigment in their palette. Fortunately, our expert interviews and analysis reveal that more enticing colors are emerging.

Light blue's ascension is connected to environmental wellbeing: clear skies, clean water. Crisp oranges are migrating from the world of high-end outdoor equipment. New paint technology may finally allow fashion's passion for fluorescents to flow from the runways onto the highways. And, as always, the smart money's on gold: as its price and profile have skyrocketed, so has its demand as a coating.