A Brief History
On March 19, 2008, an astronomical event occurred that resulted in the farthest ever known object able to be seen with the naked human eye. Gamma ray burst GRB 080319B was a burst of light seen from Earth for 30 seconds or so.
Digging Deeper
While GRB 080319B had a light intensity about 21 quadrillion times brighter than our Sun, the fact that it occurred 7.5 billion light years away made it less than impressive to the casual observer. That this event happened 7.5 billion years ago is a sobering thought.
The farthest point in the universe observed by scientists so far is 13.5 billion light years away. If you could travel at the speed of light, it would take you more than 13.5 billion years to reach this point!
For perspective, it would take 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the Sun at the speed of light, 93 million miles away.
Note: We look back at early civilizations and think of them as ignorant of the facts of the solar system, the galaxy and the universe, but one must wonder how much we currently do not know that future civilizations will think of us as ignorant!
Question for students (and subscribers): Do you believe the universe is finite or infinite? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Hawking, Stephen. The Universe in a Nutshell. Bantam, 2001.
Mazure, Alain. Exploding Superstars: Understanding Supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts. Praxis, 2009.
The featured image in this article, an ESO artist’s impression of gamma-ray burst GRB 080319B, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
