Questions About Space: Is Travel Circular? Can You Reach Big Bang Light?

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Two questions to be precise, I've heard both ideas but neither from a reliable source. The ideas are put quite simply, and any further explanation would be much appreciated.

Firstly: I've heard that if you continue to travel into space, you will eventually land up where you started, much like on this earth.

Secondly: If you traveled far enough and fast enough into space, in theory could you eventually reach the light emitted fromt the big bang? So as light was released from the big bang in traveled into space, and is still traveling now.

Both of these ideas sound like cool thoughts, but I'm not sure if they are correct. I know the second one is possibly irrelevant as we would never be able to catch the light up, but possibly an interesting concept.

Thanks :smile:
 
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CrawfordK said:
Secondly: If you traveled far enough and fast enough into space, in theory could you eventually reach the light emitted fromt the big bang?
My non-physicist understanding is that we can see the radiation emitted within a short time period of the Big Bang. You don't need to travel to see it, it comes to you.
 
EnumaElish said:
My non-physicist understanding is that we can see the radiation emitted within a short time period of the Big Bang. You don't need to travel to see it, it comes to you.

That's awesome, I'm trying to find a source, where I can get some more information.
 
Does nobody have an answer? Or possible explanation?
 
Your first question has to do with the topology of the universe. At the moment the universe is thought to be very close to flat geometry and all observations indicate there is no non-trivial topology. If a non-trivial topology were to be discovered it would conflict with standard inflationary cosmology models.

I think that your second question is assuming that somewhere in the universe there is a point where the big bang happened. This isn't really the case. Enuma Elish is referring to the CMB which is a snapshot of the universe as it was approx 400 000 years after the big bang.