Question on seeing billions of light years into space?

I actually asked this same question two days ago. (You should try searching for the question under my profile.)

I got some great results, but the best answer I received is that the common understanding of the big bang as an event where all the matter in the universe started at a single point and then MOVED to its present position is somewhat incorrect. The actual understanding of cosmology at present is that the universe started with all the matter distributed, but with no SPACE. Ever since the big bang, SPACE has been created between the matter, allowing it to coalesce into the forms we see today. Since the objects aren't actually moving, but are just creating space between them, this expansion is not limited by the speed of light restriction.

I know, it all sounds a little like hocus-pocus, but most of post-relativistic physics has that nature!

To the best of my knowledge, the most distant objects found so far have been measured at as much as13 billion light-years distance. Those objects, galaxies in formation, tell us that the universe is at least that old.......AT LEAST. That's the only thing we can be reasonably certain of. So, there's a fairly large gaping hole in the "knowledge" base between the age of the objects we are picking up and the actual age of the universe.

But we also know that they are travelling in some direction that may not be directly away from us. This means that we will have to wait until these objects show a change in the "projected" location in order for us to determine to what degree, if any, they are travelling sideways, up or down. This will give us a real spatial vector, a speed, and quite probably (if present observations of nearer objects compared to much earlier photos) an acceleration. Accuracy will get better with time. Perhaps we will know with good certainty, where exactly the "Big Bang", or the Membrane Theory equivalent of it, happened --eventually.

Technology has given us advances in detection, magnification and observation that "dwarf" what we did or could see even twenty years ago. A lot of the newer data is so revealing, and yet, so "out of context" with the older data.

It's the comparisons of the older "red shift" with the newer values of the same objects that has given rise to the accelerating expansion of the universe and the new "Big Rip".

Always remember that theories are based on observations and measurements taken in the last 80 years on a universe that is at least 13 billion years old. It's a darned lousy little bitty snap-shot what "what is" in order to try to explain "what was". A lot of time, I refer to theories as scientific fairy tales. They require repeated observations and measurements in order to define and refine the "explanation". So, along comes increasing "red shifts" and the "Big Bang" gets a whole new perspective and scrutiny -- hence Membrane Theory. (Remember, it's a scientific fairy tale in need of factual proof.)

Don't get frustrated with the constant changes, or the seeming inconsistencies. "The truth is out there."

They use what is called "galaxy lensing" in which other closer, brighter galaxies are used to "lens" the further ones using Einstein's theory that gravy wells bend light as it passes by them.

I'm not so sure I totally buy into it, but these PH Ds do.

Sometimes what science does and says is so strange (like finding "life possible planets through wave undulations") that I have to laugh when they put down Astrology and Creationism.

I mean sometimes the "learned garbage" that comes out of their mouths sounds just as far fetched.

And quite often they get disproven.

Look at ace astronomer Fred Hoyle, back in the late 50s and early 60s his book was considered a classic and cornerstone, today's a bunch of myths and old wives tales about Saturn the only planet with rings, Pluto as a planet, the Universe in Steady State.

We are seeing those things as they were 13 billion ago, they may not exist at this time. Light follows the curvature of space so there may be an element of error in the time estimated because the light did not necessarily travel in a straight line. It is difficult for a mere human to grasp the size of the universe.

Well, the light we're seeing was generated 13 billion years ago, from a galaxy. That galaxy is likely much different 'today' than as we're seeing the light from it, but it's *still* likely generating light. And, 13 billion years from now (and longer, probably) - the light it's sending out *today* will reach us (or, where we WERE, anyway, as the Earth will probably no longer exist.)

u r a bit confused abt this topic..

now u have a lamp an one side of a room and a screen on the other side. no matter what ever distance the screen is the light will reach the screen(only less brighter). that doesnt meanthe screen is sooner than light or anything. right? teh same for earth.

light travels in straight lines (from principle of least action) (unless gravitational lensing is present) so scientists can be sure of the source. no need to trace and its impossible to trace btw

sai