[DannyTN]

If they estimate the age of the universe is 13 billion years old, then how can they see light that is from 1 billion after the Big Bank.

Assuming that galaxy traveled away from us and we both left the big bang at the same time. Then if that light left that galaxy when that galaxy was just 1 billion years old and traveled for 12 billion years to reach us, then we must be at l2 billion light years from where that galaxy was when the light was produced. If the galaxys are going in opposite directions, then seems like our galaxy would have had to travel at almost 11/13 times the speed of light to be 12 billion light years away from where that galaxy was after it had traveled 1 billion years.

If the galaxies are going in the same direction. Then our galaxy has to be going even faster to receive the light 12 billion years later.

If the galaxies are going slow like on the order of 1/4 the speed of light, then it seems like the earliest we should be able to see is 3/4ths the age of the universe.

What am I missing?

[Blood of Tyrants]

What are you missing? Scientifically, the theory or relativity. Spiritually, a relationship with the creator.

[Larry Lucido]

And if you're travelling the speed of light and turn on your headlights, what happens to the light?

[AntiGuv]

[jammer]

Well, it may not be as simple as the algebra problem of the two trains leaving the station at the same or opposite directions. Perhaps the direction is at an angle, say, 90 degrees. And, like you said, our calculations (you really made me think!) assume a constant velocity, which is probably not true.

[NormsRevenge]

New Math :-?

Here's a blurb from the Hubble Site as well, with links to images. Thanks for the post.

Hubble Goes 'Deep' to Sample Young Galaxies

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reached back to nearly the beginning of time to sample thousands of infant galaxies. This image, taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, shows several thousand galaxies, many of which appear to be interacting or in the process of forming. Some of these galaxies existed when the cosmos was less than about 2 billion years old. The foreground galaxies, however, are much closer to Earth. Two of them [the white, elongated galaxies, left of center] appear to be colliding.

This image represents less than one-tenth of the entire field surveyed by Hubble. The full field, consisting of about 25,000 galaxies, is part of a larger survey called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), the most ambitious study of the early universe yet undertaken with the Hubble telescope. This survey targeted two representative spots in the sky - one in the Northern Hemisphere and the other in the Southern Hemisphere. This image represents the southern field, located in the constellation Fornax. The entire GOODS survey reveals roughly 50,000 galaxies. Astronomers have identified more than 2,000 of them as infant galaxies, observed when the universe was less than about 2 billion years old.

Because infant galaxies are very faint and very rare, astronomers are using Hubble to search for them over a relatively wide swath of sky. In fact, the new observations cover about 60 times the area of the original Hubble Deep Field Observations, obtained in 1995. Astronomers also are using the Chandra X-ray Observatory to search the GOODS fields for the earliest black holes in the universe. The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) will sample these same fields soon after it is launched in August 2003.

By combining light from all three of NASA's great observatories with data from ground-based telescopes, astronomers hope to build a coherent picture of galaxy evolution.

This image of the southern field was assembled from observations taken between July 2002 and February 2003.

The science team consists of M. Giavalisco (STScI), A. Barger (U. Wisconsin, Madison), N. Brandt (PSU), S. Casertano (STScI), C. Cesarsky (ESO), C. Conselice (Caltech), L. Cowie (U. Hawaii) S. Cristiani (Osservatorio Astronomico Trieste), T. Dahlen (STScI), D. de Mello (JHU), M. Dickinson (STScI), S.M. Fall (STScI), C. Fassnacht (STScI), H.C. Ferguson (STScI), R. Fosbury (ST-ECF), A. Fruchter (STScI), J. Gardner (GSFC), G. Garmire (PSU), N. Grogin (STScI), R. Hook (ST-ECF), R. Idzi (JHU), A. Koekemoer (STScI), C. Kretchmer (JHU), Kyoungsoo Lee (JHU), B. Leibundgut (ESO), M. Livio (STScI), R. Lucas (STScI), P. Madau (UC Santa Cruz), B. Mobasher (STScI), L. Moustakas (STScI), C. Papovich (U. Arizona), S. Ravindranath (STScI), A. Renzini (ESO), M. Richardson (STScI), A. Riess (STScI), Piero Rosati (ESO), H. Spinrad (UC Berkeley), E. Schreier (STScI), D. Stern (JPL/Caltech), M. Stiavelli (STScI), M. Urry (Yale Univ.), and R. Williams (STScI). Also on the team are Y. Park (JHU), A. Hornschemeier (JHU), R. Somerville (STScI), S. Jogee (STScI), D. Alexander (PSU), F. Bauer (PSU), E. Chatzichristou (Yale Univ.), B. Simmons (Yale Univ.), S. Cristiani (Osservatorio Astronomico Trieste), E. Daddi (ESO), M. Nonino (Osservatorio Astronomico Trieste), and J. Lotz (UCSC).

[DoughtyOne]

Larger version LINK  Absolutely remarkable!

[lilylangtree]

"Live long and prosper!"

[stainlessbanner]

bttt

[edsheppa]

A couple of points. First, you're probably assuming that 1B years after the big bang the furthest two points in space-time could be from each other is 2B light-years but the universe could have been bigger than that (e.g. inflation).

Second, a low-end estimate of the hubble constant is 50km/s/Mpc. I think that means we'd be moving about .7c relative to a 13B light-year away galaxy.

[LiteKeeper]

YEC Skeptical SPOTREP

[Arthalion]

What am I missing?

Mostly the fact that WE aren't moving at the speed of light, so we aren't really 12 billion light years from the point where the photons were first emitted. It didn't reach us until now because the universe is expanding, stretching the distances between the galaxies, which really screws with the travel time of those stray little light beams. Toss in the fact that the cosmic expansion isn't constant, but is accelerating, and the math to determine the travel time of our trans-universal photonic travelers gets REALLY fun. Have a peek (and this is the simple version that leaves the acceleration math out).

Despite the fact that this light took 12 billion years to reach us, the originating galaxy was probably only 4 or 5 billion light years away when it was emitted.

[John Valentine]

Danny- You can't assume that our galaxy is as old as the universe. It isn't. Frankly, I don't know how old our galaxy is, but if it were created yesterday, we could still see the light streaming by from that 12 plus billion year old galaxy, certainly long long gone by now. Also, it is the universe itself that is expanding, not a bunch of galaxies expanding into an empty volume of infinite universe.

It is more like blowing up a balloon and watching the printed pattern on the surface of the balloon expand, even though each piece of ink stays attached to its little spot of rubber. You could say that each and every galaxy has stayed in approximately the same place, yet are growiung farther apart because the universe itself is getting bigger.
To bad you can't measure it because the rulers are growing, too.

Then you have to factor in relativistic effects. There is no way to know what went on during the very very early days of the universe, but surely the speed of light was not what it is today, and in fact time itself would have been much different.

It may seem silly to say, because we really lack the language to speak of such things, but the first few seconds of expansion after the big bang may have taken millions of years in the prevailing passage of time then. The passage of time has enormously slowed down now, and things are happenning at a snails pace, but compared to the speed of the passage of time 10 billion years from now, we are zippy indeed. To people that might exist 10 billion years from now, it won't be noticeable at all. To them, we might have come and gone in the first one billion years of the universe, which to them will look to be about 14 or 15 billion years old.

Such is the weirdness of it all...... And it really is this way....

[ctonious]

What am I missing?

Don't be intimidated by those who throw "Oh that's really simple" BS at you. I "are" an MIT-educated Aeronautical & Astronautical engineer (as we illiterate engineers say) - and I don't get it either. I never have - and I came to this thread hoping to ask the exact same question you did. So far, I haven't seen anybody demonstrate any understanding of it.

We need an astrophysicist to explain how we are either moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light - in which case light itself is saying "Hold up!! (Pant, Pant) I gotta show you these 12 billion year old images of the beginning of the universe" - or how the other side of the universe that we're looking at - warp-drove away from us at many times the speed of light right after the Big Bang - and then deigned to slow down to show us what it was doing at 1 billion years old.

[colorado tanker]

Cool pictures of baby galaxies. Good thing they didn't have abortion back then.

[nravoter]

"I think I see my Dad."

Cameron Frye, Ferris Bueler's Day Off

[mrsmith]

"Webb Hubble snaps stunning baby pic... "

[Bryan24]

Hmm.

- We don't know where the universe started.

- We don't know when the universe started.

- We've never witnessed the birth, life and death of a star.

- We've never been out of the gravitational field of our sun to know if light speed is constant.

But we can pinpoint the birth of the universe (Big Bang). It's not 12 Billion years old. It's not 14 billion years old. It's 13 Billion years old. That is a pretty neat trick, using 4 unknown variable and computing the age of the earth.

Personally, I lean to the idea that God created an enormous and vast universe and put all the light "in place". But that is just me.

[US_MilitaryRules]

It looks to me like 11 3/4 billion years.
What a bunch of marrrooons!!!