Astronomers just discovered the farthest object in the known universe

Re:Astronomers just discovered the farthest object in the kn... by sph on Friday April 08, 2022 @06:58PM (#30963505)

To add my dumb question: since the universe expands faster than light, how is this considered a very far object and not just that we're looking at something in the past? Is this confusion of mine between distance and time what physicists mean by space-time?

If that's the case, why isn't the article titled "astronomers just discovered the oldest object in the known universe"?

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Re:Astronomers just discovered the farthest object in the kn... by spindle on Friday April 08, 2022 @09:00PM (#30964300)

Distances of this sort of thing are not measured directly - what's measured is its red shift, which tells us both how distant it is (very) and how old it is (very). That inference is indirect and depends on the model of cosmology, but the relevant bit of cosmology is relatively uncontentious.

(But if it really was only 13.5 billion light-years from Earth then you'd be right. In fact it's much further away than that.)

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