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Letter: Is farther older?

Published 19 April 2006

From Howard Zimmerman

In the 25 March issue there seems to be a misrepresentation of the ages of galaxies (“Shady deals on galactic scale,” page 21). It states that cosmologists “compared the mass ratio of visible and dark matter in these [faraway] galaxies with the ratio in galaxies that are close by – and therefore older.”

Nearby and distant galaxies may well be the same age, but the visible-light images received from distant galaxies represent a time when the universe was “younger” compared with the visible-light images from closer galaxies.

New York City, US

Issue no. 2548 published 22 April 2006

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