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Hi. This diagram summarizes the current and anticipated status of space telescopes' ability to see back in time towards the earliest events following the Big Bang:....

an interesting thought just struck me, "IF" you could look outwards enough (assuming that means you are looking backwards in time as you go futher outwards) then eventually you should see a wall of white light moving outwards from the center of the blast.

IF so shouldn't this prove the big bang theory of the creation of the universe?

MikeT

There is no such thing as a 'center of the blast'.
The big bang didn't happen inside spacetime. It was the creation of spacetime itself and all the natural laws. And then spacetime expanded (simplified). What you would watch if it wouldn't be impossible would be increasing brightness back in time, as if someone would dim the light up. But as I said, that's impossible to watch. You can't see past the time when the universe became transparent.

maxim.

miket6065 wrote:an interesting thought just struck me, "IF" you could look outwards enough (assuming that means you are looking backwards in time as you go futher outwards) then eventually you should see a wall of white light moving outwards from the center of the blast.

IF so shouldn't this prove the big bang theory of the creation of the universe?

As maxim pointed out you wouldn't find this light in a single direction, but all around you, and it wouldn't be from the big bang itself, but from a time a couple of hundred thousand years later.

This is called the Cosmic Microwave Backround and has been found.

Harald

What's also interesting with the JWST isn't only that it can look further back in time, but also that it will be used to detect earth-sized exoplanets through the "wobbling" of the stars they're orbiting around. And maybe even the atmospheric compositions by analysing their spectrums.

If you're excited about Jupiter-sized exoplanet discoveries today, just imagine what it will be like in 2011!

Here's some info about it:
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/science/DRMTheme5.html

Btw, I just had a scary thought... I hope the plans for that telescope isn't put on hold because of Bush's new space exploration plans!

Jugalator,

Nope. The Hubble servicing mission was cancelled for safety reasons, not due to its cost.

Fortunately(?) the Webb telescope is not designed to be serviced.

It's currently planned to be launched to an orbit in the Earth's L2 Lagrange point (1.5M km further from the sun than the Earth) from Cape Canaveral in August 2011 using an Ariane 5 rocket.

Harry wrote:

miket6065 wrote:an interesting thought just struck me, "IF" you could look outwards enough (assuming that means you are looking backwards in time as you go futher outwards) then eventually you should see a wall of white light moving outwards from the center of the blast.

IF so shouldn't this prove the big bang theory of the creation of the universe?

As maxim pointed out you wouldn't find this light in a single direction, but all around you, and it wouldn't be from the big bang itself, but from a time a couple of hundred thousand years later.

This is called the Cosmic Microwave Backround and has been found.

Harald

Right...

Perhaps some further interesting remarks at this point:

--The Microwave background radiation that was recently explored with such high precision (WMAP, Boomerang ballon experiments,...), concern photons (light).

--These data have spectacularly confirmed the standard cosmology back to the time of photon-decoupling, i.e. when the universe was only about 300000 years old!

--It is rather inevitable that there is a similar background radiation from Neutrinos! They have decoupled at a much earlier time, wenn the universe was only
1 sec after the BigBang!!!

--If these "relic" neutrinos could be detected like the photons before, by means of so-called "Neutrino telescopes" [ICECUBE,AMANDA...] at the South pole, this would provide a new exciting window to the universe at 1 sec time scale...

-- We can even calculate the
relic neutrino density quite accurately from the StandardModel of elementary particles:

Just got to find them...

Bye Fridger

Hi Celestia textures Big Bang Download No

Harry wrote:

miket6065 wrote:an interesting thought just struck me, "IF" you could look outwards enough (assuming that means you are looking backwards in time as you go futher outwards) then eventually you should see a wall of white light moving outwards from the center of the blast.

IF so shouldn't this prove the big bang theory of the creation of the universe?

As maxim pointed out you wouldn't find this light in a single direction, but all around you, and it wouldn't be from the big bang itself, but from a time a couple of hundred thousand years later.

This is called the Cosmic Microwave Backround and has been found.

Harald

...exactly correct. What is much more exciting though is the fact that there must be a completely analogous background from relic neutrinos! While the photons decoupled, when the Universe was about 300000 years old, the neutrinos decoupled when it was only 1 sec old!!!

At the South pole a promising "neutrino telescope" is being built (ICECUBE) that perhaps might have a chance to see traces of the relic neutrino background radiation!

If so, we would gain experimental information about the Universe, 1 sec after the Big Bang!!.

Bye Fridger

PS: hi hi, I just noticed that I wrote essentially the same things a few posts higher up, several weeks ago....hmm