Big bang.....?

Question

If planets and galaxies that we see in the sky that are really millions of light years away, does that mean we are seeing what happened millions of years ago? If thats true then theoretically wouldn't we be able to see the Big Bang happening if we look far into the universe?

Answer 1

yes. I was just ready an artical about that. let me find it again

ah here we go

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=988_1184180994

they're getting closer, but we still need some better telescopes

I guess its not possible to go alllll the way back though. ya know. I mean every day, hour minute and second we loose time that we cannot regain.

I'm sure we've already missed at least the first 2 hundred million years

Answer 2

NO.

To the best of my knowledge, the most distant objects found so far have been measured at as much as13 billion light-years distance. Those objects, galaxies in formation, tell us that the universe is at least that old.......AT LEAST. That's the only thing we can be reasonably certain of. So, there's a fairly large gaping hole in the "knowledge" base between the age of the objects we are picking up and the actual age of the universe.

But we also know that they are travelling in some direction that may not be directly away from us. This means that we will have to wait until these objects show a change in the "projected" location in order for us to determine to what degree, if any, they are travelling sideways, up or down. This will give us a real spatial vector, a speed, and quite probably (if present observations of nearer objects compared to much earlier photos) an acceleration. Accuracy will get better with time. Perhaps we will know with good certainty, where exactly the "Big Bang", or the Membrane Theory equivalent of it, happened --eventually.

Technology has given us advances in detection, magnification and observation that "dwarf" what we did or could see even twenty years ago. A lot of the newer data is so revealing, and yet, so "out of context" with the older data.

It's the comparisons of the older "red shift" with the newer values of the same objects that has given rise to the accelerating expansion of the universe and the new "Big Rip".

Always remember that theories are based on observations and measurements taken in the last 80 years on a universe that is at least 13 billion years old. It's a darned lousy little bitty snap-shot what "what is" in order to try to explain "what was". A lot of time, I refer to theories as scientific fairy tales. They require repeated observations and measurements in order to define and refine the "explanation". So, along comes increasing "red shifts" and the "Big Bang" gets a whole new perspective and scrutiny -- hence Membrane Theory. (Remember, it's a scientific fairy tale in need of factual proof.)

Don't get frustrated with the constant changes, or the seeming inconsistencies. "The truth is out there."

Answer 3

Yes you are looking into the past and no you can't see the Big Bang no matter how big and powerful your telescope is.

When you are seeing light from other stars its' true that you are actually looking at the past since the light can only travel so fast. However your ability to see into the past is restricted by how far away the viewed object is in relation to you.

Lets look at it this way. Lets say you are looking at celestial object that 35 light years away. That means you are looking at light that is 35 years old, even though the star is much older than that. No matter how hard you look at this star you are only going to see 35 years into the past.

Since the Big Bang is the start of the universe the only way to see the Big Bang is if our galaxy is moving away from the origin faster than the speed of light, which is not possible.

Answer 4

yes

Our technology has allowed us to see only a few moments away from the big bang. I believe it is minutes or hours.

Either way.. the closest star is 4 light years alpha-centari
the closest galaxy is 2.3 million light years distant.

In this moment.. each galaxy is 15 billion years old. But all of them are appear slightly younger. Due to the speed of light.

So... if a galaxy rotates once full rotation every 1/4 of a billion years.. and a particular galaxy is 1 billion light years away... then the image we take here on earth is 4 galactic rotations behind.

Answer 5

True, only problem is we live under the equivalent of a cloudy sky. The early Universe was a very hot and dense place. Light photons kept bouncing into things and undergoing interactions. Eventually the Universe expanded and cooled enough for electrons to combine with protons and form neutral hydrogen atoms. At that point the Universe became transparent to most of the light photons and they have been travelling through space ever since. This "bottom of the clouds" or "surface of last scatter" is the cosmic microwave background. Look up the website of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), it has a lot of articles discussing cosmology and observations of the microwave background.

Answer 6

Yes, we are seeing what is millions of years away because light can't go faster than 300,000 kilometers per second. So if you see anything farther than 300,000 kilometers, you are seeing the past.
Also, we can only see the objects near then 13.7 billion light years. Any thing farther than that doesn't have enough time for its lights to reach us.

The light doesn't have enough time to reach us here so maybe we should just wait so we can see the Big Bang.

PS : Anything happening in the sun and you see it means that it happened 8 minutes ago.

Answer 7

Yes, we directly observe the Big Bang every day. When you look 13.7 Gly away in every direction, you see those portions of the universe as they were 13.7 Ga ago: as the hot, dense state of the Big Bang. We call this the Cosmic Background Radiation and it is the leftover glow of the early universe. The CBR was last scattered when the universe was about 100,000 years old, and it's opaque, so unfortunately we cannot see directly right to the beginning.

Answer 8

no because the reflrcting light that travels at the speed of light and would be impossible because you need to travel at the speed of light that day with the big bang to see it what we see is the light reflection of distance

Answer 9

Yes.. And recently a theory to see further back than that was posted...

http://www.space.com