Originally posted by jedijesus
if i look back far enough with a telescope, i should be able to see the big bang if the universe was traveling at light speed, except that the big bang happened before this galaxy was created, and therefore, space should be moving faster than light speed. The light from the big bang should be beyond us except for the fact that the universe is said to be slowing down. if that is the case than we should catch up to the big bang. I don't know when that would happen but that would mean that the universe is in fact collpsing. What do you think?
Just to expand a little on why we can't 'see' the universe any earlier than age ~300,000 years (or redshift of ~1100). With a telescope, you can see the surface of the Sun. However, you cannot see the centre of the Sun. This is because photons (which is what your telescope detects, whether radio, microwave, infrared, light, UV, X-rays, or gammas) below the surface of the Sun are emitted, absorbed, scattered etc and very few emerge from the surface unscathed (so to speak).
Neutrinos, on the other hand, do travel through the Sun unhindered, so any created in the core can escape without being absorbed, re-emitted, or scattered, and indeed are detected with 'neutrino telescopes'. In this case, however, since we can't focus neutrinos, the image of the Sun is all blurry.
If neutrino telescopes could detect the relict neutrinos from the post-Big Bang era, we'd see something like the CMB. It still wouldn't be the Big Bang however, because the relict neutrinos come from a time when they were last scattered (etc), and that time is many thousands of years after the Big Bang itself.