"Mark Earnest" wrote in message
...

"Double-A" wrote in message
oups.com...
The Oldest Light in the Universe

by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and ScienceIQ.com

"A NASA satellite has captured the sharpest-ever picture of the
afterglow of the big bang. The image contains such stunning detail that
it may be one of the most important scientific results of recent years.
Scientists used NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to
capture the new cosmic portrait, which reveals the afterglow of the big
bang, a.k.a. the cosmic microwave background. One of the biggest
surprises revealed in the data is the first generation of stars to
shine in the universe first ignited only 200 million years after the
big bang, much earlier than many scientists had expected. In addition,
the new portrait precisely pegs the age of the universe at 13.7 billion
years, with a remarkably small one percent margin of error. The WMAP
team found that the big bang and Inflation theories continue to ring
true."

http://www.physlink.com/


So now, with the Hubbell, we can almost see the Big Bang?
So what exactly is stopping us, why can't we in fact see it?
If we could see it, it sure would solve a lot of arguments,
and answer a lot of questions.

Maybe we have to be at just the right distance from where the Big Bang
happened, so that the light can have all of those billions of years to get
to us?

Mark

I am still confused about seeing these images from the past. Take the BB,
for instance. It's image has been traveling radially at the speed of light
ever since it happened. Shortly after the BB, physical matter started to
slow down and began to clump together, thus further slowing down. Along the
way, about 8 billion years later, Earth formed. By my estimation, the image
of the BB has traveled way beyond the Earth, the edge of the visible
Universe, even and is lost forever, at least as a pictorial visual. It is
almost as if someone shoots a pistol, then taking off running in the same
direction and claiming to catch the bullet just before it hits the ground.

As far as the background emissions, I think that the Universe wants to be at
the absolute Zero, but the combined radiation of the billions of galaxies is
enough to keep the ambient galactic temperature at about 3.5 or so degrees
above zero. As they are receding from each other, that is very slowly
dropping towards zero, and by the time the last stars blip out into
oblivion, everything will stop.