What Could We See If We Observed the Big Bang with a Powerful Telescope?

[Abbas Ibn Firnas]

Hi,

I have a question...

If I were to build a telescope that could produce images of things about say... 14 billion light years away... What would I see?

According to the Big bang theory, shouldn't I just see a singularity and nothing else?

Thanks.

 

[Pengwuino]

No, that's like saying if you run across the street, you can use a pair of binoculars to look at yourself on the other side of the street

 

[Abbas Ibn Firnas]

actually... if I could travel faster than light, that wouldn't be so difficult.

Anyway, my question didn't involve moving anywhere, and so your answer was not relevant.

 

[Pengwuino]

But space-time has expanded away from the big bang, if you're looking through a telescope, you're looking at a distance.

 

[SpaceTiger]

According to the Big bang theory, shouldn't I just see a singularity and nothing else?

There probably won't actually be a singularity (see the many discussions on quantum gravity in this and the "Beyond the SM" forum), but in traditional BB theory, the singularity would lie at z=infinity, so its light would be redshifted to nothing. It doesn't matter, though, because in practice we can't observe light beyond the surface of last scattering at z=1100.

 

[Abbas Ibn Firnas]

Thanks for your reply.

I don't really know much about physics so that just went right over my head. Are you saying there's some kind of limit at which the light moving away from the big bang no longer reaches us?

 

[SpaceTiger]

I don't really know much about physics so that just went right over my head. Are you saying there's some kind of limit at which the light moving away from the big bang no longer reaches us?

At earlier times in the history of the universe, the matter was much denser and more ionized, so light couldn't travel very far through it before getting absorbed/scattered. It wasn't until about 300,000 years after the Big Bang that light could travel long distances without interacting with matter. Thus, virtually all of the light that we see was emitted after the universe was ~300,000 years old. The rest has long since been absorbed/scattered.

 

[thoms2543]

it is the theory of big bang true?i don belife that.

 

[Garth]

it is the theory of big bang true?i don belife that.

Do you understand the reasons why other peole do?

Garth

 

[Chronos]

Feel free to believe whatever it is you believe, thoms. Ignoring science does not make it go away . . . drat, Garth already said that.

 

[thoms2543]

measure the age of universe?can we?can we measure the number of sand of a big river?otherwise big bang is a theory, it does not mean that it is true at all.

 

[EL]

otherwise big bang is a theory

Sure it's a theory (what else could it be?). But it's definitely not a guess.
Big Bang theory is suported by a number of strong observations, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang#Observational_evidence.

It is generally stated that there are three observational pillars that support the Big Bang theory of cosmology. These are the Hubble-type expansion seen in the redshifts of galaxies, the detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background, and the abundance of light elements. (See Big Bang nucleosynthesis.) Additionally, the observed correlation function of large-scale structure of the cosmos fits well with standard Big Bang theory.

 

[matt.o]

Well, I would say there were 4 pillars that support the standard big bang theory (lambda CDM) and they include those mentioned in the Wikepedia article, plus large hierarchical scale structure observations, but I am biased!