NASA is trying to sight the oldest stars ?????

Question

which were formed a million years after the big bang .but the light from the oldest havent had enough time to reach us , as the rate at which the universe expands is greater than the speed of light . even if technology allowed us to see that far the light from the oldest stars wouldn't have reached us, right???

Answer 1

I think you're confusing a number of things. NASA doesn't do research on stars...it launches space vehicles. The research is done by scientific and engineering institutions, such as JPL and the Hubble Space Telescope Institute. These in turn sponsor multiple research projects, each with a principal investigator, usually associated with a university.

I believe the research project you're referring to is being carried out by the Hubble telescope. It is studying the light reaching us from the farthest objects known. This light has been travelling for billions of years. And that's the light they have to study, because that's what we can see.

Answer 2

The universe cannot be expanding at faster than the speed of light. As I understand it, the speed of light is inviolable--nothing can do it except light.

Also, I doubt that they are trying to find a star born just 1 million years after the birth of the cosmos--1 million years is just a blink of cosmic time-- no way to measure anything that precisely.

Yes--they are looking for the light of ancient stars, Remember that distance is equal to age-- By looking for the most distant stars and galaxies, they hope to get a clue about the early conditions of the universe.

(Remember--since it does expand, a really old star wasn't as far away when its light left it as it is now...)

Answer 3

Now that I think about it, you might be right. If gravity goes faster than the speed of light, then maybe all the "dark matter" is really just matter that's so far away we can't see it yet.