Science: Light At The End of the Cosmos

With infrared detectors, astronomers spy ancient galaxies

When University of Arizona Astronomer Richard Elston first aimed a newly assembled infrared-light detector at the heavens last spring, he was hoping to find objects so faint that they had never been seen by human eyes. Almost at once, his specially equipped telescope picked up something astronomers have been seeking for years. Last week Elston and two colleagues announced at an American Astronomical Society conference in Austin that they had found what appeared to be primeval galaxies some 17 billion light-years from earth -- so far away in both space and time that they seemed to be poised at the edge...

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