13 billion light years away.
2006-11-02 14:36:12 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Sorry. ... could you see the Big Bang ...
2006-11-02 14:45:09 · update #1
No, for a couple reasons. Firstly, the closer back you look towards the Big Bang, the more light is "red shifted". This means that the light becomes more reddish, or its wavelength gets longer, or the energy of the photons making up the light go down. To go back to the Big Bang itself, the red shift you'd have to look for would be infinite. That means the wavelength would be infinitely long, and the energy of the photons from the Big Bang would be zero. You can't see zero energy photons.
The second reason has to do with what we believed happened in the early moments of the universe. We think that initially the universe was opaque to light, e.g. that there was too much stuff in the universe for light to travel far if you want to think of it that way. This, however, changed pretty quickly and the universe went from being opaque to light to being transparent to light (as the current universe is, allowing us to see things billions of light-years away). So, if you imagine looking at such a vast distance, you'd see the point where the universe became transparent, but beyond that point the universe would be opaque to light, meaning light from beyond that distance wouldn't be able to come out of that area. Only light from the exact distance/time that the universe turned from being opaque to light to being transparent to light would be visible, and nothing further than that. As it happens, we more or less do see this light, and we've given it a name. It's the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) which when it was discovered about fifty years ago was a tremendous piece of evidence for the Big Bang.
2006-11-02 19:41:49 · answer #1 · answered by DAG 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes! In fact you don't even need a telescope. The Big Bang didn't happen "out there" someplace 13 billion light years away. It happened right where you are (and where I am, and any other place in the universe).
2006-11-03 00:06:06 · answer #2 · answered by taotemu 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well you can see the universe expanding and galaxies traveling AWAY from us, they are still moving from the big bang. Some of the noise you see on your TV is from the big bang as well.
2006-11-02 23:36:50 · answer #3 · answered by howdoyou k 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nope. The closer you get to the big bang, the greater the red shift of the light. The red shift of light from the big bang is infinite, in other words it has lost all its energy so you can't see it.
2006-11-02 22:40:18 · answer #4 · answered by zee_prime 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Its already been seen to the extent its possible - its called the CMB or comic microwave background. The energy oft he explosion after 13.7 billion years is so spread out it has practically no energy anymore.
2006-11-02 23:37:49 · answer #5 · answered by Michael da Man 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, you could in theory only see back to the surface of last scattering, when the universe became opaque.
2006-11-02 22:44:43 · answer #6 · answered by eri 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
MR HUBBLE?
1 BILLION DOLLARS AND A MISSILE SYSTEM TO LAUNCH IT.
2006-11-02 22:56:08 · answer #7 · answered by cork 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
no, the image of it already passed us by
2006-11-02 22:38:01 · answer #8 · answered by hanumistee 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
NO
2006-11-02 22:44:53 · answer #9 · answered by genius sonia 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋