Astronomers look back 13.2 billion years in space

[MilwaukeeMike]

So I read an article the other day that astronomers have looked 13.2 billion years back in time basically, or roughly 500 million years before the supposed big bang.

So if the big bang actually happened, could astronomers finally prove it by looking back that extra 500 million years?

Would proving the big bang put to rest any other questions about our creation, or would it just open up more?

 

[Jimbo07]

So I read an article the other day that astronomers have looked 13.2 billion years back in time basically, or roughly 500 million years before the supposed big bang.

So if the big bang actually happened, could astronomers finally prove it by looking back that extra 500 million years?

Would proving the big bang put to rest any other questions about our creation, or would it just open up more?

Here's a linky:

Distant Galaxies on Space.com

Your post has a number of points. The first graphic in the article shows several 'maps' superimposed in an isometric representation. The right-most is a map of the cosmic microwave background, an observation that takes us to about t + 300 thousand years or so. This is already observed and strongly favours the Big Bang model. Is this 'proof' in a religious or mathematical sense? No. It does, however, carry on in the finest traditions of science where observation matches a prediction from theory.

So far, the Creationists haven't shut up...

 

[Ziggurat]

So I read an article the other day that astronomers have looked 13.2 billion years back in time basically, or roughly 500 million years before the supposed big bang.

So if the big bang actually happened, could astronomers finally prove it by looking back that extra 500 million years?

I presume you mean 500 million years after the big bang.

But no, you can't see the big bang directly. If the big bang theory is correct, then the very early universe would not consist of galaxies and starts, but of a super-dense, super-hot soup of particles. And one of the properties of something this dense and hot is that it's opaque. Any light emitted from the big bang itself would be absorbed before going very far. It is only once the universe expands and cools sufficiently that the universe essentially becomes transparent. Light emitted during this transition period should still be around, however - it would be red-shifted because of the continued expansion of the universe, but it should be there. This, in fact, was a prediction made by people coming up with the model of the big bang. So, do we see anything that looks like that? Yes, we do: it's called the cosmic microwave background, or CMB. So what we see fits the predictions of the theory, but if the bing bang is correct, the CMB is the farthest back we can possibly look, we cannot see anything earlier than that because the universe was opaque if we go back further.

 

[Fredrik]

I was going to say exactly what Ziggurat said...

...except I probably wouldn't have called it the bing bang.

 

[Skeptic Guy]

Isn't that the Bada Bing Bang?

I recently saw this article at space.com which claims that some theoretical physicists are thinking that it may be possible to glimpse "the universe prior to the big bang". I am not sure what they mean by "universe" prior to it existing, but I ain't a physicist.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070702_mm_big_bang.html

Past research suggested the Big Bang was preceded by infinite energies and space-time warping where existing scientific theories break down, making it impossible to peer beforehand. The new findings suggest that although the levels of energy and space-time warping before the Big Bang were both incredibly high, they were finite.
Scientists could spot clues in the present day of what the cosmos looked like previously. If evidence of the past persisted after the Big Bang, its influence could be spotted in astronomical observations and computational models, Bojowald explained.

What are your thoughts on that? Is it possible?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070702_mm_big_bang.html

 

[INRM]

Okay... I thought the big bang just was after one big crunch, which was preceded by a big bang?

If the energy levels that preceeded the big bang were finite, that means everything and anything is finite right? Or not? Also, how did they arrive at these conclusions?

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

Isn't that the Bada Bing Bang?

I recently saw this article at space.com which claims that some theoretical physicists are thinking that it may be possible to glimpse "the universe prior to the big bang". I am not sure what they mean by "universe" prior to it existing, but I ain't a physicist.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070702_mm_big_bang.html



What are your thoughts on that? Is it possible?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070702_mm_big_bang.html

That's a pretty cool idea. What would pre-big bang space even look like... It is hard to fathom an empty void with absolutely nothing in it, stretching to infinity. So is it possible something was there before the big bang?

What are, if any, the current theories on pre big bang space?

I remember watching a show on the Discovery Channel a while back that explained one theory where the universe cycles by expanding to a certain point, followed by contraction to the point where the universe collapses on itself creating another big bang starting it all over again.

 

[NobbyNobbs]

I presume you mean 500 million years after the big bang.

But no, you can't see the big bang directly. If the big bang theory is correct, then the very early universe would not consist of galaxies and starts, but of a super-dense, super-hot soup of particles. And one of the properties of something this dense and hot is that it's opaque. Any light emitted from the big bang itself would be absorbed before going very far. It is only once the universe expands and cools sufficiently that the universe essentially becomes transparent. Light emitted during this transition period should still be around, however - it would be red-shifted because of the continued expansion of the universe, but it should be there. This, in fact, was a prediction made by people coming up with the model of the big bang. So, do we see anything that looks like that? Yes, we do: it's called the cosmic microwave background, or CMB. So what we see fits the predictions of the theory, but if the bing bang is correct, the CMB is the farthest back we can possibly look, we cannot see anything earlier than that because the universe was opaque if we go back further.

In fact, I'm told that you can do this with a television set. Turn to a channel that is all static. I was told that something like 1% of those flecks of light you get is due to the CMB.

I think that's jusst the most incrediblly cool thing I've ever heard. I mean, think about it...you can witness a piece of the beginning of the entire universe right in your living room!

Who needs religious miracles when you've got this stuff?

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

So what we see fits the predictions of the theory, but if the bing bang is correct, the CMB is the farthest back we can possibly look, we cannot see anything earlier than that because the universe was opaque if we go back further.

Might it be possible to "see" (as in image) further back using neutrinos or gravity waves? Wouldn't the universe have been transparent to them prior to being transparent to light?

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

So if the big bang actually happened, could astronomers finally prove it by looking back that extra 500 million years?

The Cosmic Background that Ziggurat mentoned is believed to be an image of the universe as it existed at a little under 1/2 a million years old.

 

[slyjoe]

In fact, I'm told that you can do this with a television set. Turn to a channel that is all static. I was told that something like 1% of those flecks of light you get is due to the CMB.

I think that's jusst the most incrediblly cool thing I've ever heard. I mean, think about it...you can witness a piece of the beginning of the entire universe right in your living room!

Who needs religious miracles when you've got this stuff?

I have seen this mentioned before also. However I don't understand it. How does the 160 GHz CMB affect the electrons hitting the TV screen? Or is it a thermal thing?

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

The CMB follows a black body curve so it covers a wide swath of the spectrum. That 160 GHz you cite may be where the curve peaks. I forget what portion of the spectrum broadcast TV uses, but presumably it overlaps the CMB spectrum.

 

[slyjoe]

Correct - that is where it peaks. VHF is generally under 216 MHz and UHF under 880 MHz. I guess the fact that the CMB power spectrum is down a factor of 10^-4 at 1 GHz could be enough.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

So I read an article the other day that astronomers have looked 13.2 billion years back in time basically, or roughly 500 million years before the supposed big bang.

So if the big bang actually happened, could astronomers finally prove it by looking back that extra 500 million years?

Would proving the big bang put to rest any other questions about our creation, or would it just open up more?

Is not the diameter of the Universe twice the "distance" from us to the BB? That is to say about 26-billion light years?

 

[Ziggurat]

Might it be possible to "see" (as in image) further back using neutrinos or gravity waves? Wouldn't the universe have been transparent to them prior to being transparent to light?

If the universe is dense enough, then it won't be transparent to either neutrinos or gravity waves. The threshold for transparency may be at a different density than for electromagnetic waves, but it won't be infinite. Because gravity waves have such long wavelengths, the threshold for transparency might be at a later time than for light, though neutrinos should start leaking through earlier.

But there's a few other problems. First, we can't pick up gravitational waves at all yet. Second, even when we start to, they're large. Very large. Unless your detector aparatus is much bigger than the wavelength (we're talking solar-system-sized detectors, at a minimum), you can't angle-resolve your sentitivity. That means that, unlike light, you would be sensing both the cosmic gravitywave background and gravity waves from your own galaxy at the same time.

Neutrinos are also tough to detect, though unlike gravity waves, we can do it. But unlike gravity wave detectors (which we can scale up with outer-space laser interferometers), we can't really scale up neutrino detectors easily. We've got close-by neutrino sources (the sun in particular), and already we can't detect all that many of them. Distinguishing a cosmic background neutrino flux would probably require far bigger detectors than we could ever possibly build.

 

[Ziggurat]

Is not the diameter of the Universe twice the "distance" from us to the BB? That is to say about 26-million miles?

Don't you mean 26 billion light years? I think it's pretty clear the universe is much larger than 26 million miles.

 

[Yllanes]

Is not the diameter of the Universe twice the "distance" from us to the BB? That is to say about 26-billion light years?

No. First of all the universe may very well be infinite. But even assuming it is finite, our observations say that its radius of curvature is greater than 70 thousand million light years. You can say that, in a way, the universe expands faster than the speed of light. Of course, this is not really a speed so there is no contradiction with SR.

This was the very short version. For a longer explanation I suggest Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Yes, I realize we don't have a practical way to detect either and gravity waves are still questionable.

If the universe is dense enough, then it won't be transparent to either neutrinos or gravity waves. The threshold for transparency may be at a different density than for electromagnetic waves, but it won't be infinite..

Isn't the time of transparency for neutrinos guaranteed to be long before the universe became transparent to EM? I thought transparency to EM was essentially a function of temperature (no longer a plasma with uncoupled charges floating around). But neutrino transparency would be a function of mass density, wouldn't it? Wouldn't mass density have fallen to a level that would allow neutrino transparency very quickly? (Like a minute or less?)

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Don't you mean 26 billion light years? I think it's pretty clear the universe is much larger than 26 million miles.

Sorry. I forgot which one I'm currently in. Don't worry, I went back in time and fixed it. Take a look now.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

No. First of all the universe may very well be infinite. But even assuming it is finite, our observations say that its radius of curvature is greater than 70 thousand million light years. You can say that, in a way, the universe expands faster than the speed of light. Of course, this is not really a speed so there is no contradiction with SR.

This was the very short version. For a longer explanation I suggest Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial.

Ah. Yes. I did have this explained to me once before when I started a thread in another venue about how much the distance of the Earth from the Sun grew over time due to Hubble expansion. Now that was a good learning experience (unlike so many).