Science question. Speed of light. Looking into the past.

Since the light we see from a galaxy 14 billion light years away would be the galaxy as it was 14 billion years ago, how come we can't see the big bang?

If the universe is 14 billion years old (as they say) and we see a galaxy as it was 14 billion years ago, the position we're seeing it at (as it was 14 billion years ago) isn't the position that it is at now. So why don't we see a more condensed cluster of the older galaxies or perhaps even see the singularity itself?

a reply to: smithjustinb

i,m guessing its cause we haven,t saw anything from 14 billion years ago.heard of seeing millions of years ago but not billions.

a reply to: smithjustinb

I thought they found the remnants of the big bang a while back, there's pics somewhere, think it was radiation.


ETA:

If the universe is 14 billion years old (as they say) and we see a galaxy as it was 14 billion years ago

Galaxies formed several billion years after the big bang.

a reply to: smithjustinb

Try watching this video, it helps explain universe expansion and how we perceive the speed of light versus expansion, which as the video will explain is not limited by the speed of light.

www.iflscience.com...

I hope it helps put your query into perspective according to what we assume we know about light, the universe, time, and space-time.

We can only see back to about 400,000 years after the big bang.

Before that the universe was so dense and hot that it's opaque.

a reply to: smithjustinb

In the moments following the big bang, the matter actually spread at a speed faster than the speed of light. We can see the background radiation of the big bang, spread evenly throughout, however if the matter is expanding slightly faster than the speed of light, it would always be a bit out of our line of sight.

SO, no seeing the big bang for us. :-/

We can see to 380,000 years post The Big Bang, after that everything becomes fuzzy, opaque mass of energy. Its just soup of unbounded electrons, there is no atoms yet, too hot for hydrogen to form. This is the source of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).

originally posted by: Thebel
We can see to 380,000 years post The Big Bang, after that everything becomes fuzzy, opaque mass of energy. Its just soup of unbounded electrons, there is no atoms yet, too hot for hydrogen to form. This is the source of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).

I always heard 400,000 years, you say 380,000, the Hubble website says 300,000.

Anyway, wherever the barrier is ... it's opaque and beyond that we cannot see.

And there's a "don't look at me I'm changing" joke in there somewhere. But I won't go looking for it.

originally posted by: sparky31
a reply to: smithjustinb

i,m guessing its cause we haven,t saw anything from 14 billion years ago.heard of seeing millions of years ago but not billions.

We definitely have.

originally posted by: Thebel
We can see to 380,000 years post The Big Bang, after that everything becomes fuzzy, opaque mass of energy. Its just soup of unbounded electrons, there is no atoms yet, too hot for hydrogen to form. This is the source of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).

So you're saying we CAN see the big bang, or at least close to it?

originally posted by: VoidHawk
a reply to: smithjustinb

Galaxies formed several billion years after the big bang.

Well, then replace the word, "galaxy" from the OP into, "matter".

originally posted by: andr3w68
a reply to: smithjustinb

In the moments following the big bang, the matter actually spread at a speed faster than the speed of light.

Not saying you're wrong. Just saying, this doesn't make any sense.

We can see the background radiation of the big bang, spread evenly throughout, however if the matter is expanding slightly faster than the speed of light, it would always be a bit out of our line of sight.

SO, no seeing the big bang for us. :-/

Even if the matter expanded faster than the speed of light, it would still have light. Although the light would lag behind the event, the light would still shine this way, and we would still see it.

a reply to: smithjustinb

When you factor in what the others have said concerning things going opaque due to everything being close together, it starts to make more sense, eh?

DP

originally posted by: andr3w68
a reply to: smithjustinb

When you factor in what the others have said concerning things going opaque due to everything being close together, it starts to make more sense, eh?

It sort of makes sense.

a reply to: smithjustinb
Well, there wasn't any "light" . . . at least not as we perceive it. Technically, all radiation is light and even what we perceive as "light" is simply radiation that can be detected by our eyes . . . or instruments.

380,000 yrs ago the first hydrogen (and subsequently helium) formed, but was not in a state to produce light at any frequency we can currently detect.

We can measure the faint remnants of the microwaves produced from the super-heated plasma state of the universe during expansion, but the first stars didn't form until hundreds of millions to a billion years after the BB. This happened during the reionization phase of the universes formation.

Chronology of the Universe Wiki

Before decoupling occurred, most of the photons in the universe were interacting with electrons and protons in the photon–baryon fluid. The universe was opaque or "foggy" as a result. There was light but not light we can now observe through telescopes. The baryonic matter in the universe consisted of ionized plasma, and it only became neutral when it gained free electrons during "recombination", thereby releasing the photons creating the CMB. When the photons were released (or decoupled) the universe became transparent. At this point the only radiation emitted was the 21 cm spin line of neutral hydrogen. There is currently an observational effort underway to detect this faint radiation, as it is in principle an even more powerful tool than the cosmic microwave background for studying the early universe. The Dark Ages are currently thought to have lasted between 150 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang. The October 2010 discovery of UDFy-38135539, the first observed galaxy to have existed during the following reionization epoch, gives us a window into these times. The galaxy earliest in this period observed and thus also the most distant galaxy ever observed is currently on the record of Leiden University's Richard J. Bouwens and Garth D. Illingsworth from UC Observatories/Lick Observatory. They found the galaxy UDFj-39546284 to be at a time some 480 million years after the Big Bang or about halfway through the Cosmic Dark Ages at a distance of about 13.2 billion light-years. More recently, the UDFj-39546284 galaxy was found to be around "380 million years" after the Big Bang and at a distance of 13.37 billion light-years.[14]

a reply to: smithjustinb

If I'm right. When they look back in time at early galaxies they look like brand new galaxies. Then when you look past them it's only the cosmic microwave background.

a reply to: ArtemisE

Plus since some galaxies have been speeding away from us for billions of years, it's not surprising that some are farther then 14 billion light years away.

This picture explains it pretty well

scienceblogs.com...

So we can't see behind the afterglow of the Big Bang, its fully opaque. Before it its empty area without stars. We can see to about 380.000-400.000 years post the Big Bang. And have to add this video, watch specially 3:20 and after.