steppenvalve wrote:
Rodney Kelp wrote:

That was taken on a tiny point of black space. Imagine how many

galaxies we

could see of we mapped all of the black space. It's unimaginable how

many

galaxies there are. It's a virtual fireworks show out there billiions

of

years old. It's also entirely possible that there is nothing there

now, that

was a 13 billion year old light.


The current (July 2004) issue of Wired, p.49, says the furthest we'll
ever see is 15 billion light years. The assumtion is that that's how
old the universe is and light simply can't be older than that. I don't
think that's quite right, though. The light from the Big Bang should be
spreading faster than the matter did, and we were a part of it, so
light from stuff on the other side of the Bang has already passed us.
I'm sure we're not on the edge of the Bang, but probably somewhere
closer to the middle. (?)

Which brings up the interesting posibility of someone on a planet on
the edge of a galexy, on the edge of a galactic cluster, on the edge of
one of these "bubble" superstructures. Can you imagine looking up at an
empty sky for half the year? You couldn't see galexies on the other
side of the bubble, could you?

That isn't how the expansion of the universe works. The galaxies
weren't pushed away from one another by the big bang. Space is
being created between the galaxies which makes them look as if they
were pushed apart. There is no edge of the Universe. There is no
place where one side is empty sky and the other side is full of
stars and galaxies. We will never see light from the big bang
itself for the same reason we can't see light from the core of the
sun, matter was to dense at the time to let light come out. But
light from 100 million years later we can see it is called the
background radiation (the 100 million years number is from memory
it might not be correct). It isn't because we are on the edge of
the universe that we can see background radiation, it can be seen
from any place in the universe (well any place where you can see
galaxies, of course you can't see if you can't see the sky).


Alain Fournier