Mysterious Space Blob Discovered At Cosmic Dawn
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 - 20:35
in Astronomy & Space
Astronomers 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.