Himiko Blob : Astronomers Baffled by Bizaree Blob in Deep Space 12.9 Billion Light Years Away

The mystery of the Himiko Blog in deep, deep, super duper deep space. Do you know what it is, scientists are baffled and confused!?

Astronomers are baffled at a massive blob at the deep reaches of the known Universe and are struggling to figure out and explain what exactly it is. Theories point all over the place, is it a young galaxy? is it just a super massive clump of gasses, something to do with a black hole?

Named Himiko after the ancient mysterious Queen of Japanese and Chinese legend, the massive blob is estimated to be 10 times the mass of other galaxies of a similar age to the giant blob.

It was gaseous, big, and emitted a certain type of radiation, said study lead author Masami Ouchi, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. In other words, the scientist really know very little.

The blob is the fourth most distant object ever discovered the researchers said. The large blob is so far away, astronomers are seeing the blob today as it was when the universe was just 800 million years old, about 6 percent of its current age. The distance and age of the blob mean its hard for the good scientists to figure out its physical origins.

"The farther out we look into space, the farther we go back in time, " explained lead author Masami Ouchi, a fellow at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution who led an international team of astronomers from the U.S., Japan, and the United Kingdom.

"I am very surprised by this discovery. I have never imagined that such a large object could exist at this early stage of the universe's history. According to the concordance model of Big Bang cosmology, small objects form first and then merge to produce larger systems. This blob had a size of typical present-day galaxies when the age of the universe was about 800 million years old, only 6% of the age of today's universe!"

Via: National Geographic