Viewing further back in time

[Patrick_Mc]

Astronomers are seeing further and further into the past of our universe. I beleive that they are able to see back approximatly 9 billion light years. What will they begin seeing when they get back to 13 billion and more light years? Will it be possible to see the flash of the Big Bang? Is it true that at the time of the singularity there was no time?

[njtt]

@Patrick_Mc

Will it be possible to see the flash of the Big Bang?

They already do. It is called the microwave background radiation. That is how we know there was a big bang.

[SoulFrost]

The Light Horizon Wiki article has some basic information on our observable universe.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

We can see much earlier than that.

Galaxies

The earliest known galaxies in the universe, which formed during the universe’s “dark age” nearly 13 billion years ago, have been spied by two teams of astronomers.

The discoveries, reported separately in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, suggest that galaxies were forming just 700 million years after the birth of the universe.

Microwave background

Researchers studying the light, which was generated at the birth of the cosmos but was seen by the satellite as it appeared when it first escaped into space about 400,000 years later, unveiled the findings in six papers posted at arXiv.org online January 26. The ancient light, known as the cosmic microwave background, is peppered with hot and cold spots, signs of the tiny primordial lumps from which galaxies grew.

That’s about as early as we’ll ever get to see, since photons themselves didn’t emerge until about 300,000 years after the big bang. There can never be a flash from the big bang, since that was an explosion of space, not in space.

[Grey]

Actually we should eventually be able to build decent neutrino and gravitational telescopes that will let us peer past the primordial fog where photons were being absorbed and re-emitted.

[Suburban_Plankton]

@Patrick_Mc

Is it true that at the time of the singularity there was no time?

Pretty much, yes. The ‘Big Bang’ created space/time, so there was no time nor space before…of course, the concept of ‘before’ really makes no sense here since there was no time for anything to be ‘before’…
Basically, all of the theories and all the math can take us back to a certain point very shortly after the ‘beginning’. If we try to go back any farther than that, then the laws of physics themselves no longer apply. At that point, not only do we not know what happened, but it is not possible for us to find out. We have no starting point from which to start building our theories.

And as for what happened ‘before the beginning’, that’s simply the realm of fantasy…

[ralph124c]

If the universe began 14 billion years ago, and the first light is still visible, then how fast did the universe expand? WE must be moving very fast (compared to the initial singularity)!

[Chronos]

If the universe began 14 billion years ago, and the first light is still visible, then how fast did the universe expand? WE must be moving very fast (compared to the initial singularity)!

The question indicates some misconceptions about the way the world works. Consider: Photons don’t just disappear. Every photon from the first light, if it hasn’t hit anything yet, has to be somewhere, so it stands to reason that an observer at that location could see it. But all locations in the Universe are basically alike, so one would expect that we can see some of the first photons, too.