How can the hubble telescope see light from the big bang?

Question

I heard that the hubble telescope is able to see the universe just after it was born. I do not see how this is possible because I figure the light from the initial big bang would have passed by earth long ago. Are we seeing a slower form of light, or am I just missing something?

Answer 1

"Just after" in this case means a few hundred million years after; time enough for galaxies to form. The closest to the Big Bang we can see is the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is from about 300,000 years after the Big Bang and is so far red-shifted only radio telescopes can detect it. Before that, the universe was opaque.

The early universe inflated so fast that parts of it are forever beyond detection. Our view of the universe is limited by a temporal horizon at a distance in light years equal to the age of the universe.

Answer 2

You're missing something. The Hubble telescope, or any telescope, or any eyeball, can only detect light that has reached it. As the Hubble telescope scours the sky it records any light that it's pointing at. Light is constantly being emitted from many, many sources; stars, reflections of starlight, and even explosions that have happened a long, long time ago, where the light has just completed its journey to the Hubble telescope. A journey it started 13.7 billion years ago.

The cosmic radiation that is thought to be the remnants of the big bang is actually theorized to have occurred around 380 thousand years after the initial explosion. Check out this site:

http://www.bio.miami.edu/dywang/universe'sbeginning.html

Answer 3

The light from just after the big bang is continually passing by the Earth, and will continue to do so for a long time to come. As far as we know, the Universe could be infinite. It is expanding, but effectively infinite at all times, even a short time after the Big Bang (which occured everywhere in this infinite volume). So, as we look out into this huge volume, we see back in time. The further out we look, the further back in time we can see. If we look out 20 billion lightyears, we can see (almost) all the way back to the Big Bang, as it occurred 13.7 billion years ago. Beyond this we cannot see---this is our "event horizon". But every day, we see one day further out. Our event horizon is expanding out at the speed of light.

It is not, however, the Hubble that can do this. The Hubble is a visual/near-infrared telescope. The oldest, furthest radiation we can see is the microwave background radiation, at radio wavelengths. In fact, a small amount of the noise from any good quality modern radio is caused by this radiation.

Answer 4

The universe was probably pretty vast by the time it actually "lit up" so to speak. This radiation which the hubble it detecting doesn't eminate from one point but can be found eminating at us in every direction we look. If someone 1 billion light years away were to point a telescope capable of detecting the radiation in our general direction, they'd see it too...or in any direction for that matter.

This radiation was everywhere in the universe at the time and went off in whatever direction. The actual photons we detect from the first light of the universe are arriving at us now because these particular ones came from a distant place. For a good while there will be photons in transit passing our ever moving location from this event.

Answer 5

The first thing to remember when you look far out into space, that you are looking back into time. Depending on how far the object really is, it can take millions of years for the light from that object to reach earth. For example, if you look at a star a thousand light years away, then you are looking at light that left that star a thousand years ago. Who knows what that star looks like now! Another example: it takes about 8 minutes for sunlight to reach Earth, so therefore you are looking at sunlight that is 8 minutes old.
As the Hubble Telescope peers farther and farther into the universe, we are able to see earlier, older galaxies, whose light has just begun to reach our eyes. By observing the structure and organization of these objects in the cosmos, cosmologists can theorize what happened after the Big Bang, and whether their observations continue to support that theory at all.

Answer 6

The hubble telescope is indeed capable of seeing lights from Big Bang. As you know, the further light is away, the more time it takes for light to get to earth and be seen. If a star is one light-year away from Earth, light there would take one year to get to our eyes, thus we are only capable of seeing the star's appearance as it existed one year ago.

According to Wikipedia, the deepest image taken by the Hubble consists of stars from more than 13 billion light-years away. This is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). According to Big Bang Theory, the age of universe is about 13.7 billion years. So, indeed, Hubble is looking back in times of the Big Bang era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_universe

Answer 7

it detects and records the light and the astronomers look at the picture and judge that the light came from the big bang. i discovered in 1999 that the cosmic background radiation is actualy light that is flying back into the deep universe from the outermost reagion of the universe. the universe(the place where all the stuff is sourounded by infinite empty space) has an escape velocity of 2c therefore anything that goes up at the speed of light comes back down at the speed of light and the big bang never happened.

Answer 8

The farther light is away, the slower it moves. Millions of light years away, we can see light from after the big bang.

(At least, I think. This is about the exent of my astronomical knowledge. If you have a medical question, I might be of more help ;-)

Answer 9

Initially, after the big bang no electromagnetic radiation existed.
You wont see anything until this phenomenon came into existence.