It’s take me a while to formulate the question I think I want to ask and this still might not be the right question to the puzzle in my head.

If the universe started out as a singularity and if the rate of expansion cannot exceed the speed of light and if light radiates out uniformly in all directions at a constant speed then why can we not every point in the whole universe all the way back to that singularity, why is there, to use a metaphor from the universe, an ‘event horizon’ beyond which we cannot see further back? It cannot be for example that light from any object, no matter how distant, would be ‘only just reaching us’. Surely the light from that distant object would always have been radiating out at the speed of light and the light wave would’ve expanded universally to fill the entire physical cosmos in all places and at all times. If our existence comes subsequent to that event then sury we would be ‘born into’ that light wave and thus all things should be equally visible to us subject to our instruments being sensitive enough to detect them.

Big question for a Monday morning I know but I’m waiting for a consultants appointment about my broken shoulder so I have nothing else to do apart from ruminate on such matters!

I can’t even understand the **** question FFS.

Imagine dropping a bag of marbles on a hard floor; try to follow them all back to the bag.

Might take a while.

I thought those microwave experiments “are” recording the echoes of the big bang

stars etc didn’t begin at the big bang, so I don’t think yr logic applies there

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhn8j7S4uKU[/video]

(a bit sweary)

and if the rate of expansion cannot exceed the speed of light

rate of expansion is not governed by the speed of light.

Well, the thing is that the universe expanded faster than the speed of light. I know this is supposed to be impossible, but the difficult concept is that objects did not travel faster than the speed of light, but the space between them expanded faster than the speed of light.

an ‘event horizon’ beyond which we cannot see further back?

if the universe is expanding then it stands to reason that at some-point it was tiny, the size of a pin prick or smaller. You wouldn’t be able to see further back than this point.

The universe’s expansion hasn’t always been a constant velocity.

Yep, the universe expands quicker then the speed of light. Also, it’s pretty big, so it’s hard to pin point anything. Your question also gets very rambly after about 3 lines, and there’s some pretty poor grammar and punctuation in there. Really hard to read and understand. Are you asking if light expands with the universe?

The universe’s expanision hasn’t always been a constant velocity.

You state that like it’s obvious, I thought that was one of the things people weren’t really sure of. I thought the age and size of the universe as we know it now depend on the assumption that it has been expanding constantly. And to use the word velocity is wrong, IMO.

rate of expansion is not governed by the speed of light.

It is in the sense that nothing can exceed the speed of light.

I understand that there will be a ‘dark’ period before the formation of the first stars but that doesn’t appear to be the limit to our perspective.

Maybe the light from the very first stars is already ‘here’ but it’s just too faint for us to detect it?

It is in the sense that nothing can exceed the speed of light.

The stuff in the universe isn’t moving outwards though, it’s expanding. Stuff can’t move faster then the speed of light, but it can expand quicker then the speed of light.

HTH.

We can already detect background radiation from the Big Bang, so in essence we can detect the “light” – it’s just the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum innit?

The universe’s expanision hasn’t always been a constant velocity.

Yeah – sometimes it is windy.

I’m typing on an iPhone hence the poor grammar and punctuation. Its an accuracy problem.

Basically my question is answered by the simple fact that the rate of expansion of the space between the objects did or still is happening faster than ‘c’.

Thanks for Clarifying that.

Also yes the original post got a little ‘ramble’ but I’m not a scientist and I’ve struggled to comprehend the nature of the question I wanted to ask. That my post rambled a little is a reflection of that fact.

the universe, very shortly after coming into being, expanded “bastard fast”, as Charlie up there said

stars wouldn’t have formed anywhere near that point in the process, so they began spewing out light when they were far far away. microwaves are the rumbly thunder from the original bang.

there is some shite about event horizons backwards and forwards in time but only men with crazy hair & big blackboards can explain this

The furthest back we can “see” is about 380,000 years after the big bang this is where the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation comes from. Before this time the universe consisted up hot plasma that was opague to electomagnetic radiation.

The “light” from the CMB has been red shifted to microwaves due to the space through which the waves have been travelling expanding as they have travveld through it

I’m not sure the answers above about the expansion of the universe being faster than the speed of light are correct…

Anyway, the answer to the question is that we can ‘see’ it, it’s just that it’s been red-shifted out of the visible spectrum into the mircowave spectrum. This is detectable and is known as the Microwave Background Radiation and was discovered in the 60’s I think.

This red-shifting has been caused by the expansion of the universe, causing the wavelength of the light to be stretched. This is just the Doppler effect on a much grander scale!

If the universe had expanded faster than the speed of light, then we would be outside of the influence of the light from the big bang, and therefore would not see this background radiation.

The other issue that you’ve got to remember is that our viewpoint onto the expanding universe is also moving: we are not viewing the big bang from a static position (this is a core part of Relativity). IIRC The big bang theories also include periods of accelerating expansion (very) shortly after the initial bing bang.

While special relativity constrains objects in the universe from moving faster than the speed of light with respect to each other, there is no such theoretical constraint when space itself is expanding. It is thus possible for two very distant objects to be moving away from each other at a speed greater than the speed of light (meaning that one cannot be observed from the other). The size of the observable universe could thus be smaller than the entire universe.

It is also possible for a distance to exceed the speed of light times the age of the universe, which means that light from one part of space generated near the beginning of the Universe might still be arriving at distant locations (hence the cosmic microwave background radiation). These details are a frequent source of confusion among amateurs and even professional physicists.[1] Interpretations of the metric expansion of space are an ongoing subject of debate.

From the font of all knowledge, ie wikipedia.

I’m not sure the answers above about the expansion of the universe being faster than the speed of light are correct…

I have a feeling that expansion at least in theory can exceed the speed of light (nothing can move faster than light, and it’s the speed of expansion of “nothing” that it’s describing)
but, since I don’t know, I’m settling for “bastard” as the rate

If the universe had expanded faster than the speed of light, then we would be outside of the influence of the light from the big bang, and therefore would not see this background radiation

I suppose some of it could’ve been left behind in our region, along with “us”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)