Scientists glimpse embryonic galaxies  American and European
astronomers have unveiled snapshots of the universe nearly 90%
of the way back to the big bang.  First they obtained images,
using a combination of radio, optical and x-ray telescopes,
showing the formation of clusters of galaxies when the universe
was 5bn years old, a little more than a third of its present
age.  They then peered back further in time, to find embryonic
galaxies a mere 1.5bn years after the birth of the cosmos. These
baby galaxies existed inside a still-developing cluster, the
most distant proto-cluster ever found, they report in Nature
today.  They used the Hubble space telescope and the Chandra
X-ray observatory to study the cluster which is known as
RDCS1252 9-2927 and a much older proto-cluster called
TNJ1338-1942. In effect, they were collecting light which had
been travelling towards Earth for up to 12 billion years.  The
visible modern universe seems to be composed of about 200
billion galaxies each with about 200 billion sta