Oldest Object In Universe?

Apparently, based on a blast of gamma radiation and some infrared energy; scientists now believe there was a gigantic star that exploded 13 billion years ago; when the universe was only 600 million years old.

From an article on CNN.com Scientists spot oldest ever object in universe, comes this exceprt:

" ... he was looking at the oldest thing ever spotted -- an enormous star exploding 13 billion years ago.

"At that point the age of the universe was only 600 million years," he said. In other words, Berger said, he was looking "95 percent of the way back to the beginning of time."

So this brings me to a question. If the universe is expanding from a big bang, and the radiation travels at the speed of light, then the explosion allegedly happened 13 billion light years away. Yet it only happened 600 million years after the big bang? How does that work? How fast was everything expanding? Wouldn't we have had to be expanding at faster than light speed for the energy to take 12.4 billion years to get to us?

Perhaps I'll need to investigate this. The Hubble constant seems to be around 70Km/sec/Mpsc; so I'm off to crunch numbers.

Trout In VA

We were fortunate to recently stay for two days in a mountain cabin in southwest Virginia. It was right near a Big Wilson Creek, which you can see in the photo of the cabin.


It was a wonderful, private, secluded spot with (no kidding) zero mobile phone reception. None. Nothing. If you drove up the mountain a little ways and parked near a gap, you could make a call. Luckily, the kids brought their fishing poles, and the creek was full of trout. After some learning curve, they caught enough for supper.