The Oldest Light in the Universe

"Greg Neill" wrote in message
m...
"Hagar" wrote in message
...

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.

Your model of the Big Bang is flawed; you're picturing
everything rushing out of an explosion into pre-existing
space. The BB was an explosion (expansion) of space
itself, occurred everywhere (everywhere that existed) at
once, and there was no center.

OK, I'll bite on this one: if there was NO space before the BB, what was
there instead ??

The expansion was so fast that light from events that
happened even relatively close to one another could
not reach each other since the space between expanded
at many times the speed of light itself.

That's been termed as "hyper-inflation", since there was nothing to impede
the outward expansion into the existing, infinite VOID of space!!

We're seeing light that left those (then) "nearby" events just
arriving now. So when we look out into space in *any*
direction, we're looking back in time towards the Big Bang.

Once again, you cannot shoot a gun and then run fast enough to where the
bullet finally hits the ground, spin around and take a photograph of the
muzzle flsh.

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.

Nope. The cosmic background radiation is much more uniform
than the clumpy matter concentrations of galaxies, and
matches the curve of black body radiation very precisely.

COBE determined that the background radiation is indeed NOT uniform, but
rather blotchy. Even though that difference is measured in fractions of a
degree K, nonetheless it matches the "clumpiness" of galaxy cluster
distribution throughout the observable universe.

"Hagar" wrote in message
...

"Greg Neill" wrote in message
m...


Your model of the Big Bang is flawed; you're picturing
everything rushing out of an explosion into pre-existing
space. The BB was an explosion (expansion) of space
itself, occurred everywhere (everywhere that existed) at
once, and there was no center.

OK, I'll bite on this one: if there was NO space before the BB, what was
there instead ??

As far as we know, nothing. Our theories do not describe
anything that preceded the BB, nor what, if anything, the
primordial universe might have been embedded. What the
theory does say is that at the instant of the beginning
of the BB, all of spacetime (all three spaceial dimensions
and time) were extremely compact.


The expansion was so fast that light from events that
happened even relatively close to one another could
not reach each other since the space between expanded
at many times the speed of light itself.

That's been termed as "hyper-inflation", since there was nothing to impede
the outward expansion into the existing, infinite VOID of space!!

Again, it was space itself expanding. Contrary to
what may seem common sense, it wasn't expanding into
any pre-existing void.


We're seeing light that left those (then) "nearby" events just
arriving now. So when we look out into space in *any*
direction, we're looking back in time towards the Big Bang.

Once again, you cannot shoot a gun and then run fast enough to where the
bullet finally hits the ground, spin around and take a photograph of the
muzzle flsh.

In the beginning space was compact, but even so all points
were surrounded by an infinite amount of other points.
Think of it as being very, very dense. When space expanded,
every point was surrounded by events that were carried
away from them by the expansion. The BB occurred *everywhere*
around every point that made up the primordial universe.
So it's not necessary to "run and catch up" to see the BB
from any given point -- the BB surrounded every point.


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.

Nope. The cosmic background radiation is much more uniform
than the clumpy matter concentrations of galaxies, and
matches the curve of black body radiation very precisely.

COBE determined that the background radiation is indeed NOT uniform, but
rather blotchy. Even though that difference is measured in fractions of a
degree K, nonetheless it matches the "clumpiness" of galaxy cluster
distribution throughout the observable universe.

Maybe you should revisit the figures. What's the magnitude
of the "blotchiness"? I think you'll find that the background
is remarkably uniform, and that the deviations are very, very
tiny in temperature.

"Greg Neill" wrote in message
...
"Hagar" wrote in message
...


COBE determined that the background radiation is indeed NOT uniform, but
rather blotchy. Even though that difference is measured in fractions of
a
degree K, nonetheless it matches the "clumpiness" of galaxy cluster
distribution throughout the observable universe.

Maybe you should revisit the figures. What's the magnitude
of the "blotchiness"? I think you'll find that the background
is remarkably uniform, and that the deviations are very, very
tiny in temperature.

"Blotchy" picture link attached:
http://aether.lbl.gov/www/projects/cobe/

"Hagar" wrote in message
...

"Greg Neill" wrote in message
...
"Hagar" wrote in message
...


COBE determined that the background radiation is indeed NOT uniform,
but
rather blotchy. Even though that difference is measured in fractions
of
a
degree K, nonetheless it matches the "clumpiness" of galaxy cluster
distribution throughout the observable universe.

Maybe you should revisit the figures. What's the magnitude
of the "blotchiness"? I think you'll find that the background
is remarkably uniform, and that the deviations are very, very
tiny in temperature.

"Blotchy" picture link attached:
http://aether.lbl.gov/www/projects/cobe/

The pictures there are lacking a legible measurement
scale that would allow their interpretation as to
actual variation magnitude.

Take a look here instead:

http://aether.lbl.gov/www/COBEimp.html

Here's a brief quote:

"There were variations in signal from the early
Universe at a level of one part in 100,000."

That's pretty small.