How close are we to seeing the big bang?

Question

Ok my question is, how close are we to seeing the big bang? Will it be in the next 10-20 years etc? Hoping ill be alive when we have the technology to see it.

Do I have to explain that it is probable that we will see it in the future? Wow, okay here I go.

If you look out your telescope and look at the sun, you will be seeing what the sun looked like 8 minutes ago.

Light does not instantaneously come to the earth. It has a definite speed. The more we look into the universe the further in time you are looking. If we look at Mars for example, through a telecope, you are looking at what it looked like thousands of years ago.

Like I said, light has a velocity. Jeez im only in grade 11.

To jstacey, you can look at the sun through a telescope using a UV filter.

Answer 1

As close as we are to the centre of the sun where temperatures exceed millions of degrees centigrade!

Seeing the happenings of the big bang is like an ant wanting to see the centre of a hydrogen bomb explosion... can that ever be! Can a human being in bodily form even visualize the scenario of the big bang? The happenings of the big bang are beyond the purview of the five senses and the mind.

Big bang explosion means an explosion that may be mega mega mega mega mega mega times the explosions occurring in the centre of the sun every second. How much exactly... can never be defined by any human being!

Big bang explosion means the start of a new cosmos with an explosion the echo of which would resonate from one end of cosmos to another. It is multi multi multi trillions of years from now when the dissolution of the Cosmos (collapse of the present Cosmos) is expected to occur.

Sooner the present cosmos collapses... it would announce the beginning of a new cosmos with a big bang. It would not be impertinent to mention here that heaven exists in the core of the sun where temperatures exceed millions of degrees... in the circumstances who would want to go to heaven! More on big bang - http://www.godrealized.com/big_bang.html

Answer 2

First, to those who think you cannot look at the Sun with a telescope, you are wrong. You are right that you should not just grab one off the shelf and point away, you can go blind without the right filters, but there are special filters that you can buy to modify any telescope for solar viewing. I am including a link for anyone who doesn't believe me.

Second, anyone can 'see' the light from the Big Bang by turning on a television and tuning to a channel that is not being broadcast on. About 2% of 1% of the static you see is radiation from the Big Bang. While it is not as sexy as looking through a telescope and seeing the bang happen in visible light (someone correctly noted that there was no light when it really did happen), radio waves are just as much light as visible light (just without the visible part).

Also, the WMAP project that was launched in the 80's (or was it the 90's....) mapped the radiation from the Big Bang in very exquisite detail.

In short, the light from the Big Bang, while not in the visible spectrum, is all around us and will be for a very long time.

Answer 3

Sorry, but we are never going to see the BB. The universe was opaque for the first 400,000 years or so after the big bang. Things were just too hot and dense for a photon of light to move very far before it got absorbed.

At about 400,000 years after the BB, most of the hydrogen gas cooled enough that it didn't absorb light any more. The universe suddenly became transparent to light. The light emitted by the hydrogen ions at this time is the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR), and we can "see" it with the proper instruments.

Practically almost none of the CBR light has hit any stars or planets or even space dust.

Be sure to view the MPEG4 movie at this link.

Answer 4

As you point out, as you look further away in space you also look back in time, because of the fixed speed of light.

It is possible to look almost all the way back to the Big Bang. The Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago. This released a hot swarm of photons and electrons and protons (after the first few seconds). Such a plasma is opaque, like the glow inside a neon tube---you can't see through it. But only 400,000 years later, the electrons and protons combined to make hydrogen atoms, and the Universe became transparent. The photons then began streaming freely. They became the Cosmic Microwave Background. So when we observe the Cosmic Microwave Background, we are looking almost all the way back (13,700,000,000 - 400,000 years) to the Big Bang. We can see this all the time, from a surface that is receding from us at nearly the speed of light as the Universe gets bigger.

Can we see further back than that? Not with photons, because for the first 400,000 years, the Universe was opaque. It is, in theory, possible to see even further back using other particles, for example neutrinos. The Universe became transparent to neutrinos very early, in the first minute, so there are neutrinos streaming by us that come from that very early time. They are, however, impossible to detect using current technology. There may be other particles that we don't yet know about, that may get us back to even earlier times.

Answer 5

FALSE.

You cannot look at the SUN through any telescope without being blinded immediately - for keeps - UV Filter or not.
NEVER TELL ANYONE TO DO THAT. YOU, AND YOU ALONE, WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR IMMEDIATE BLINDNESS. AND, IN CASE YOU HAD OTHER IDEAS, BLINDNESS IS IRREPAREABLE.

The big bang you discuss is millions of years in the future and nothing for you to worry about now.

What you need to worry about is some simple child reading your statement about looking at the Sun with a telescope.
you need to pray that no one does that stupid thing because of your words typed here on yahoo answers. Blindness is no joke.

Finally, light we see coming from Mars is reflected light originally emitted by the Sun. Mars is 141 million miles from the Sun and we, on Earth are 93 million miles from the Sun.
So at closest approach the distance from Earth to Mars would be about 48 Million Miles (light would travel Mars to Earth in about 4 minutes), and at most distant points in their orbits, Mars and Earth might be 234 Million miles apart (Light from Mars would travel to Earth then in 20 minutes). There is not any situation in which Mars light rays might take thousands of years to reach Earth. Sorry, you are just not right on this point.

Answer 6

When big bang happened the space started spreading at a very high speed so to see the big bang you hypoteically need to be 'outside the universe' where laws of phyisics are different.

Answer 7

I can tell your in the 11th grade, no one should take out a telescope and look at the sun,YOU WILL GO BLIND YOUNG MAN, DON'T DO IT, and if you did,you must be typing blind. Besides,I believe in the second coming of Christ! Not the "Big Bang Theory". God bless you young man,you are in my prayers! And to all reading this, DON'T LOOK AT THE SUN,ESPECIALLY THROUGH A TELESCOPE !!!!

Answer 8

First mars is closer to earth then the sun so it is not thousands of years its only a few minutes. To answer you queston we will never be able to see it.

Answer 9

For me it feels like eternity til I see the next big bang

Answer 10

It never happened and never will happen. Do something for me: get a bunch of nails & wood. Put some dynamite on it & blow it up. Let me know when you get a table out of it.