I certainly am no astronomer, but if my layman's understanding of "big bang" theory is correct, and the universe has no center and no edge, then what lies beyond this newly discovered galaxy should be pretty much the same as space surrounding us nearby. If that is true, then perhaps our resources might be more productively expended by studying near space a bit more and extreme far space a little less - at least until we get a better understanding of near space (e.g. how stars and galaxies form, as questioned in the article).

Not much, because:

A) If their age estimate of the universe is correct, they are more than 99.99% of the way to the edge of the universe. There would be little visible matter, only an expanding wave of radiation headed outward, and therefore invisible.

B) redshift on that magnitude is almost undetectable. Much older galaxies would probably not be producing enough energy of their own to be detectable.

Good question. I'm not an astrophysics expert, but the article implies that if you look even further away, and therefore further back in time, eventually our 'vision' becomes obscured in the haze of the earliest universe and, if I understand correctly, at the extreme it blurs out into the cosmic background microwave radiation which is basically everywhere out there as the leftover 'heat' of the big bang.

I say this as an explanation of how I think I understand the theory, but it doesn't sit well with me. Trying to wrap my brain around all this sometimes is a bit boggling. The fact that these distances and impled times back into history are calculated on the basis of redshift, makes me wonder just how accurately we understand that process.

The implication is apparently that there is nothing much else beyond, and that when you've reached the limit, you've reached the origin, but my cartesian brain has trouble visualizing how looking in every direction as far as we can look always takes us back to the same supposed singularity. How can a singularity be the remotest edge in all directions? This doesn't make sense to me.

So I too question if there is indeed something else beyond, and whether maybe this whole big bang origin theory is just wrong in some as yet unrecognized but fundamental way. I don't have an answer, but I do wonder.

This is very true , because of the expansion of the universe (which expended faster than the speed of light)

"The Big Bang" is a theroy that cannot be proven, any scientist worth his weight in gold would know this and not quote it as fact. State it as it really is a person on crack got the idea since there is now scientic proof anywhere to support the theory.

Umm..how do you determine if a scientist is worth their weight in gold? That's really bizarre.

The Big Bang is inferred from the redshift of galaxies. What do YOU attribute that to, Thor?

I am always waiting for that far distant image of the Lord Almighty standing there in His Knickers, Creating the Universe. Alas, I am still disappointed.

Is is possible that on the other side of this galaxy, 13 billion light years away, that there might be another 13 billion light years of Universe that we will never see, because we are on opposite sides?

@ Alan Boyle, Alan do you mean if we could travel to this galaxy thru a worm hole that we would see exactly what we see on earth when we got there in a twinkle of an eye?

I may have misunderstood your comment but isnt the light we are seing 13 billion years old so if we were to go thru a wormhole and travel 13 billion light years to this galaxy we would be seeing a very different picture possibly one of a dying galaxy with stars that are buring out, or this galaxy could have been swallowed up by another galaxy, or there could just be a bunch or red dwarf start living out their days since all the other massive stars either blew up or became planetary nebulas.

Can you clarify that for me?

I’m no astronomer but it intrigues me when people speak of an expanding universe. It appears to me that what they’re speaking of are the observable galaxies that are moving away and they are considering what they can see as the universe.

If that is the definition of the universe, then exactly what is it expanding into? It seems there is an infinite void that our “universe” exists in and there may very well be other “universes” elsewhere in this void that are not detectable, or at least not yet. As a matter of fact, there may be still other galaxy’s that would be considered part of this universe that haven’t yet been detected due to their extreme distance.

Besides, this most distant galaxy the astronomers are viewing is in actuality the light from this galaxy from 13.6 billion years ago. The location of this galaxy is most certainly very far from where it was when this light began its trek towards earth so I don’t think anyone can put an edge on our universe. Actually, I don’t believe there is an edge or limit on the universe, like this void it’s most likely infinite.

So, speaking in terms of time for traveling light, this fog is there because it's so close to the time when the universe sprang forth from the singularity that is the big bang. The ultra deep field is an image taken by scientists looking through a relatively empty portion of sky (from our perspective in orbit around Earth- where Hubble is) in order to get the longest clear line of sight (if i recall correctly). So, is it correct to think of this as basically looking at any random spot in the sky? You basically point the telescope anywhere (where there is a good line of sight) and you'll see the beginning of the universe?

This raises two ideas for me...

1.) We are "in a bubble" looking at the "edge of the bubble". -that is to say we're on earth looking at the outer edge of the universe. It just looks the way it does because we only see the light that existed 13 billion years ago.

or

2.) We are "in a bubble" with the outer "edge" of the "bubble" behind us and somehow we are looking towards the center of the "bubble". - That is to say we are looking right down into the big bang. So, what's beyond this galaxy? the Big Bang. The singularity from whence we came.

If the second idea is the case then would it be crazy of me to suggest that there is some force (akin to gravity) that basically pulls our optical view towards the big bang? You could point the telescope any which way you want and look as far back as possible and you'll always see the big bang? You can never see the outer edge of the universe, because the light of the universe cannot escape the Big Bang (sorta like a black hole)??

Maybe the perception of the "bubble" has more to do with the fact that we are also looking back in time, as well as distance.

Pirate, If you could travel to that galaxy in the blink of an eye you'd arrive in a galaxy that was 13 billion years more developed than the one in the image. when you turn around and take an image of our milky way galaxy you'd see the light that left the milky way 13 billion years ago. (I'm not sure how old our galaxy is). and this is all assume you'd had some way of tracking the movements of our galaxies over that period of time.

Dennis, I am aware of this time dilation. It's what really boggles my mind. Even if you and I were sitting across from one another in the same room there would still be an amount of time it takes for the light reflecting off your eyes to reach my eyes. Multiply that times several trillion trillion and we're in the range we're talking about. It takes time to see distance. Dimensions can be difficult to visualize and even harder to talk about. ;-P

Not for anything, but I can see much smaller and dimmer "dots" in that image. I'm sure they'll see farther and farther out as time goes on.

How do we know we're looking in the right direction?

If we can look back 13.6 billion light years in any direction, does that not imply that we are at the center of the universe?

We may be looking at the most distant thing we've ever seen, but to assume it close to the edge of the universe comes off as arrogant to me.

What's an "astromer," as referred to on the MSNBC website?

"here there be monsters"

Arch, that was my thought. This thought process, at least how my perception of their explanation, is that somehow we're the center of the universe. Isn't that akin to the days of the old Greek mythology when they thought that the earth was still and the sun travelled around it?

It really seems quite arrogant to me. I frankly doubt that we are the center of this "known" universe and I also have no doubt that there is far more out there than these scientists with their limited imaginations can see. They just can't seem to imagine anything that can't be impirically prove.

the Big Bang theory can be divided into two parts. the first part describes what happened between time 0 (when the "explosion" began) and around 13 B years ago, when the universe was the size of our galaxy. the second part describes what happened after that.

the second part has SOME evidence to back it up, mainly the Cosmic Background Radiation, the observed accelerated expansion of space.

the first part is 100% guesswork. we don't have any clues that tells us what happened before year 600,000. our telescopes can't see beyond that (due to the fast-than-light accelerated expansion of space causing us to move faster than the light originated from places beyond that time).

pretty much every scientists agree on part 2 of the theory, it's the first part that causes much debate. there are probably over 20 different but equally credible theories today in regard to the first part.

Just how small we are in the Universe and really nothing to it's overall plan. But where does the Universe actually end everything has to have some boundary. Another amazing discovery. Let's get NASA back.

I have never been able to get my head around the fact that we can see light that left an object about 13 billion years ago and yet the universe is only about 13 billion years old. If it took 13 billion years for the light to reach Earth, how far away from the Earth's present location was the object when the light left it 13 billion years ago? How far away from Earth would it be now and would it even still exist?

@mob_barley

"from whence" is redundant.

But speaking of singularities... space is not a bubble - it's warped by black holes into a torus. We can almost see 'our backs' with Hubble, now. :)

everything has to have some boundary

Who says? Many scientists are convinced that the universe has no edge, either because it is infinite or because the curvature of space will eventually lead you back to the same point.

If we can look back 13.6 billion light years in any direction, does that not imply that we are at the center of the universe?

Not at all. If you were floating in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere close to the New Zealand coast, but not close enough to see the coast, you would be seeing nothing but ocean in every direction. That doesn't mean, however, that you are anywhere near the centre of the Pacific.

Trying to wrap your mind around the concepts involved in the size and shape of the universe is almost pointless, because we are used to visualising places and distances as on a map, the latter being essentially a "snapshot" of an area on a given point in time. Using this method to visualise the universe is defeated by the fact that, because of the length of time it takes light to travel to our eyes, almost none of our observations of the universe stem from the same points in time. Thus the "snapshot" visualisation is impossible, and a map of the universe as it looks currently, would involve almost innumerable calculations to adjust for the movement speed and direction of each and every universal body between the time we observed it in, and our current time. Nevermind the fact that you would also have to anticipate the interactions between different bodies, because they would affect each other's speed and direction.

Objects in a geographic visualisation (map or aerial/satellite photography) are plotted on a scale of distance, while objects in our visualisation of the universe are, by necessity, plotted on a scale of distance and time. I don't believe the methods or computing power to fully compensate for the time factor, will exist for a very long time, if ever.

gksa,

Yours is a very well articulated somewhat dark - even hopeless perspective but in truth reality offers no promises of anything more. I appreciate your perspective - it is provocative. In fact from your writing you or others like you may one day prove what I would argue - that you are likely wrong. There is an attribute of discovery that that I do not see factored in to your view of the universe and the secrets it may always hide.

That attribute is realized in the minds of those who can imagine what they do not see or know with any certainty, and can invent mechanical and mathematical tools to find the trailhead to their own path to knowledge. It was a Greek philosopher in 500 BC that decided that atoms defined the smallest, indivisible units of matter. Isaac Newton built calculus to solve for observations of points of light in the sky when the math of his day failed to do so and that math to this day enables scientists to predict with great accuracy how to propel an object off of this planet and arrive years later in orbit around another, and Albert Einstein reasons relativity from for the most part his dining room table.

There are so many more worthy examples of astonishing leaps of logic that came without the benefit of computers, electron microscopes, particle accelerators or even calculators. I submit that the human factor has consistently proven that it can trump its own technological limitations.

Our failings may be many but our potential is exponential.

I thought of a good analogy for what you are saying:

If we were to be located at some point on the Earth, say in New Zealand, and we were to look into a magic mirror that was a window through which we could view what anyone was doing, anywhere in the world, the further fromNew Zealand you looked, the further back in history you would be looking.

If you looked into the magic mirror towards Chile you would see Salvador Allende still living and counter-revolutionary anti-Marxist national strikes taking place. And then if you looked further away, towards the south-western United States, you could witness Napoleonic French diplomats negotiating the Louisiana Purchase. And then if you looked even further, towards upstate New York you would also be looking back in time to the 16th Century, and you would be able to see the Five Nation, Iroquois League, before the Beaver Wars with their French and Huron allies supporting them.

Then, looking even further from New Zealand, towards the north-east, you could, with patience, find England, and gazing deeply into the mirror you might hear people in the east of the country speaking mainly Anglo-Saxon. You could see Vikings in the north-east, and hear them, trading smoked-fish at the markets, west across the sea in Dublin, while in the kingdoms toward the west you can hear the voices of British-speaking people. ...And far to the north there would still be Pictish people.

Then, looking further west it would be requiring so much concentration, that you have no choice but to give up and turn your attention to the far north-west, instead, across the coast of China, to where you see opium being traded for tea; and then, over India, where the Delhi Sultanate has already given way to the Moghul Empire, which has now become firmly established. Then, further west, to Egypt, where history has come to an end -the Christian Romans have just banned the matriarchal Egyptian Phaoronic religion. Anubis, Isis, Bastet, Horus ...now forbidden to help them, or to guide them on their journey to the Land of the Dead. The patriarchal Romans have imposed Christianity on the Egyptian people. Egyptians can now only look back in time through the illustrious history of their beloved Land of Egypt, such as to the time of Ramses III, where Egyptians are breathing with a sense of relief, and are even celebrating, after defeating the invading army and fleet of the greatly-dreaded Sea Peoples. Now their time is at an end, and the Egyptian people will no longer know freedom, and will no longer know themselves.

Now more patience is needed, it is becoming harder to see through the swirling clouds of space and time, but further west, again there are Celtic people in Europe, though their time of freedom is coming to an and - Vercingetorix has united the freedom-loving and independent tribes against a common enemy - the Romans! But to the methodically-organised Romans it is a police-action against insubordination to Roman authority. The Romans are relentlessly methodical, and the Celts, despite compromising some of their freedoms to confront the Roman war-machine, have not managed to quite match the Roman strength nor the extent of their inhuman methodology: Right now, at the Battle of Alesia the Celtic Gauls could be facing defeat!

Further west and north it becomes too cloudy. We are too close to the very edge of time and space for the mirror to reveal clearly, too close to the beginning of history. Looking across the English Channel, to the south of Britain, on Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge is being built... but beyond that ...it is too hard to see...!!!

... too hard to concentrate ...too far from here in space ...too far back through the mists of time!

*quiet applause*

I offer Elizabeth Jane LOUD APPLAUSE. I sit humbled.

My analogy was in response to what gksa said.

Philip Andolina I agree so much with what you say. Except that instead of these being leaps of "logic" I would say "intuition" and "imagination".

I even believe that we create reality with our expectations of how "reality" can be. There are many examples of people imagining what might be, followed by desires and expectations that what might be must somehow be possible - if only the means to see how it could be possible were to be believably imagined.

It is like wishing for something to happen. Science fiction has so often preceded science "fact" - even in expressing in visionary imagination things that scientists claimed were "impossible". Then, through a combination of intuition and wishcraft, with knowledge of what was already believed possible, and ingenuity at "getting around" the objections of the doubters, the means by which the so-called "impossible" could become scientifically possible was "discoverd". How is that possible?

Plato would have said - you already knew it was possible - that you are born with knowledge, and that "learning" is a process of remebering what you knew before you were born.

For example, teleportation, imagined, for example in "The Fly", a French science -fiction story written in the nineteen-fifties, then made into two movies, also, in the nineteen-fifties, which are then re-made in the nineteen eighties, with the "physically impossible" idea of "teleportation" being used extensively in science-fiction, such as in "Star Trek" and "Blake's 7", being popularly fully accepted as science-fiction fictional-reality, despite denunciation andcondemnation by right-thinking, reputable, real-world scientists, and then a means of technically engineering the impossible being found, less than a decade ago!

It is not the means to achieving the physically impossible that amazes me, so much as the means by which it becomes "possible" to render reality in the likeness of imagination.

The same with time travel - hitherto seen as "impossible" - now there are serious scientific projects to build a time-machine. H.G. Wells - how did you know it would be possible?! All you have to do is imagine! As Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge". This is a fundamental, logically provable truth! (And not just by means of these illustrations that I have given here.)

Science shuns the existence of astral plane existence and reincarnation - though reincarnaton is a proven reality (see the book "Old Souls" which is listed in "Wikipedia" for scientific proof) and this means that the astral plane - a plane of thought, where we exist as beings, outside of physical "incarceration". But I can see why scientists are against it! They are afraid of it!

On a plane of thought we create with our minds! We create thought-forms. We don't have to make things using physical construction methods. We don't have to work to aquire the money to get the materials, or to hire people with knowledge of construction methods or to purchase manufactured objects. We aren't deprived of our needs, such as the need for food and shelter, the deprivation of which allows us to be enslaved on the physical plane - which is it's obvious purpose, in my view - enslavement of human beings!!! That doesn't wash well with patriarchal religions - "Get thee behind me, Satan!" is what Jesus of Nazareth said to Mary Magdalen in the desert, but he was enslaved - "Thy will, not mine!" he complained! No freedom! Sorry, if you are an unswervable Christian - I would so much like you to see everything anew and wonder - is it a tale told by an idiot, and written in reverse? ...just reporting what I can see with an open mind, as anyone can if they think about the human-condition logically, without fear!

So if "reality" is freedom, being free on a plane of thought, and creating with our minds, then that would explain the "impossible" becoming possible providing you can imagine and want it to be possible - in other words, providing you wish hard enough! (Of course it's much harder for wishes to come true on the physical plane - and young children, obviously recalling what it was like to be on the astral plane, can't see why wishes just don't come true all the time: They have yet to be brainwashed into accepting the harsh conditions of their confinement!

OK, first to answer the question of “Are we at the center of the Universe?” The answer is no, because there is no “center” No matter where in the universe you are, if you look at the other galaxies, they will all seem to be moving away from you, and the further away, the faster they are moving away from you, except a few in your local group that would be blue shifted, meaning they are moving toward you and eventually your galaxies will merge, Andromeda is an example.

How can this be? How can every galaxy be moving away from each other? The standard way to describe it is to take a small, deflated balloon and using a magic marker, mark a few dots on the balloon, measure the distances between the dots. Now inflate the balloon and measure the distances, what happened? They moved away from each other right? And no matter what galaxy (point on the balloon) all the other ones seem to be moving away from that one point, but the same can be said about ALL of the points. You will also notice that the further away the points were from each other when you made them, the faster they moved away from other points when the balloon was inflated. In the “real” universe, space is constantly expanding so the galaxies are not really moving away from each other, the space between them is.

Next of all, is there an “edge” to the universe? It depends on who you ask, but the “standard” reply is there is an edge to what we will ever be able to see and access, this is the even horizon. In the first few <insert incredibly small number here> of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was expanding much faster then the speed of light and the event horizon signifies any light over that edge will never ever reach us and light on this side of the horizon will never ever reach what ever is on the other side of the horizon. Our universe, that is, the universe that was created at the point of the Big Bang, is much bigger then we will ever know and the even horizon is like a wall all around us and “acts” like an edge.

So, to answer another one of the questions in this topic, we do not think the Big Bang started because of red shifting of light, to put it in simple terms, if everything is moving away from each other, they must have been closer together at some point and if you keep running the clock backward, everything will move to a single point; a singularity.

@Mob, you are very close to “A” truth, we could very well be in a “bubble”. For those that were asking why we keep looking so far back is to answer a philosophical question that has plagued us for thousands of years, how did the universe begin? And did Time have a beginning? The arrow of time is described as Entropy, loosely defined as the movement from order to “messiness” we can make an omelette from an egg, but not an egg from an omelette.

So one of the really big questions is, “Why did the Universe have such low Entropy at the Big Bang???”

If, in the true vacuum, a false vacuum arises due to quantum fluctuations, it could start to push space upwards and form a bubble, the energy in the bubble would grow extremely quickly and WHAMO, a baby universe, a new Big Bang. It truly would start off as a Point in space, and it could happen in the same room you are in right now, but… because the space would “brake off” from our space, it would be in a different “dimension” and we could not interact with it so ever, meaning the Big Bang from the Baby Universe that just happened a few feet away from you would not harm you in the slightest. This Hypothesis is a leading candidate of how the universe started and solves the Entropy problem.

One other Hypothesis is the Big Bounce, meaning once the Universe reaches maximum Entropy, the natural laws flip, electrical charge, momentum and left/right handedness, the universe then moves toward a Big Crunch, then the laws flip and the Big Bang. This is 100% possible and testable, we just need to find a White Hole and/or we need to see light coming out of our telescopes to prove it.

http://www.buddhadude.net/

Elizabeth Jane,

you had me until "astral plane" and "scientists are afraid". No they're not. There simply isn't any credible evidence of the existence of such a realm or place or alternate non-physical level of relaity, or whatever you want to call it. Reincarnation stories and imagined experience of "past lives" is nothing more than human creativity expressing fantasies and "wishcraft" as you so cleverly put it in your first post.

Do your homework! Refer to the reference I gave you!!!

Wow, so many beautifully written and thought-provoking posts... After just reading so many idiotic statements in another thread, you just made my day!

Way to toss politics and lies into a discussion totally not related to it. Shows your level of maturity. It is also funny how the people who complain about hatred are usually the ones filled most with it.

Onto the topic at hand. This is a cool article. I know it isn't possible now, but I always want to see if we will ever be able to see before the moment of the big bang. Wouldn't it be a shocker if we could see beyond it to a point where we see a completely different universe. But then again that likely wouldn't be possible due to the redshift and the cloud mentioned in the article. Anyway, was a good read till I got to the above comment.

Yes Pat from Huntington, NY - where I am moving back to; Ugghhh!! to califarcia.....

And THAT Mystical Entity? NONE Other than his majesty george bush Creator of the shrubber reign.

You're not going to be able to see before the BB because time as well as space started there at that instant. There is no "before". That is not to say that there wasn't a previous universe that collapsed into that infinite mass, zero time state known as the instant before the BB (although to call it a previous universe does not have the same meaning as one saying that yesterday was a previous day due to the time not starting yet issues.)

Picture the universe as starting in an instant taking up zero space, but with infinite mass. Time is not started. As soon as that infinite mass expands a bit it is no longer infinite as it isn't sitting on a "zero" or no space point and the mass is then, in fact taking up some space (This creates space too). Due to this, time starts rolling forward since time and space are 2 aspects of the same thing. Time is not passing as fast as today either. Keep in mind that time is just the 4th dimensional passing of the space, and as there isn't as much space, time isn't as "stretched out" as it is now. Now the kicker is that from within the universe (The only view we get) time and space always seem infinite. We can't see the "speed" of time, nor the "size" of the universe.

I've always suspected that to the next universe up, our whole universe is just like a drop of water. Of course that's just speculation as we can never know this information, no matter how advanced we get technically.

I realize it may be somewhat painful but, if you do it slowly (and get some assistance), you should be able to correct your anatomical aberration. Cranial rectumitis (while a common condition among those of your ilk) really is no way to go through Life. It's about science here, troll.... Please, go in peace and spout your insecurity-driven political drivel elsewhere....

Nice! Bring politics and inaccurate attacks on Tea Partiers/Republicans when the article is about space. Extreme fail!

As I have always said, there is no way we are seeing everything out there..."In fact, the astronomers behind the observations say they couldn't have seen UDFy-38135539 unless there were other, fainter galaxies nearby to help clear out the space around it. "Without this additional help, the light from the galaxy, no matter how brilliant, would have been trapped in the surrounding hydrogen fog, and we would not have been able to detect it," Durham University's Mark Swinbank said in a news release from the European Southern Observatory."

Also, please allow me to modify the statement from..."Astronomers have confirmed that an incredibly faint galaxy in the constellation Fornax is the most distant known object in the universe, shining more than 13 billion light-years away and reflecting an era when stars were just beginning to emerge from a cosmic fog."...to... "Astronomers have confirmed that an incredibly faint galaxy in the constellation Fornax is the most distant known object in space that has been viewed from Earth, shining more than an estimated 13 billion light-years away and reflecting an era when stars, in theory, were just beginning to emerge from a cosmic fog."

No offense, but the "big bang theory" is just that and it is not a theory I fully believe. It is more likely, in my opinion, that there were and always will be much smaller "little bangs", possibly, simple galactic bangs with occassional galaxies and other matter being absorbed by another bigger galaxy. Galaxies are so immense and full of "empty" space that it is even possible that galaxies could pass through each other with relatively, very little "exchange" of matter happening and only slight modifications in their individual solar systems. Of course, you could imagine some massive collisions that would have a major effect on local matter. For instance, two planets or stars colliding and this could cause significant change in that particluar area. Undoubtedly, some galaxies may be totaly absorbed by others.

The "universe" is in constant change..it is indeed alive and will continue to be. We need to step out of our shell and see that the only real possibility is that space is infinite. What else could it be?

i think they are proposing an ammendment to the constitution saying the world is only 6000 years old.

Little bang theory... well, your proposal is actually a hypothesis...

... per the scientific method you now have go out and collect measurements that support it to achieve "theory" status.

Most lay-people are confused about how theories exist in science. They exist until observation requires their dismissal or alteration.

@bloggerich one thing I think we can all agree on is that our species is still at preschool level in its understanding of the cosmos, as time goes on our knowledge will increase and things that are incorredct will be corrected.

And she is a witch and has "insider" information.

I would think it is impossible to see before a Big Bang event unless we have telescope equipment that can see at the molecular level. Also, the Mass of the object whos diameter before the Big Bang event was large enough that it would take light year(s) to reach the middle of. On top of that, we don't know exactly how many light years have passed (have become unrecoverable) which would cause the ability to see Pre-Big Bang event space impossible without physical (not visual) using time travel.

Even then, we would need technology to see past/filter any whitenoise-like observations within Pre-Big Bang space and newly created Post-Big Bang space.

I wanted to also note if we are using the available visual information of far out objects (planets/galaxies) to pinpoint where they would be located in our (visual) time. That way we can understand, if scenarios like planetary/galaxy collisions caused new asteroids/planets/galaxies to be formed, destroyed or directional movement change.

Note, I am not an astrophysicisit.

Ha Ha...thanks Mark-423819...bust my bubble. I will attempt to gather supporting evidence to explain/prove my "little bang" theory, although, my office chair is very comfortable.

Not mystical entity, dear one. God created the universe and everything in it. As to the age, I'm no scientist, so I don't know about that one. Some things are left to faith. That's why I put my faith in a God who put it all in place rather than mere men who have to assume to even begin with an experiment.

Yeah, should'da asked Saracuda. She could see UDFy-38135539 from her living room. Well at least she can now!

Sorry Sarah, but your guys DO ask for it. "ha-ha, charad you are" R. Waters

It's cool really, taken into perspective. Our sun wasn't even "born" 13 billion years ago.

and Al Gore said he has a solution for Universe Warming.

Well, if you "Tea-Bagger" party primitives knew anything about science, you would be able to see that it makes FAR more sense than anything the Bible states, all it take is a little "brain power" to understand. If you Bible-thumpers really believe God gave you a brain, why don't you use it? Your beliefs are completely irrelevant. Read a little more about science and get your asses off the couch and away from the FOX News Network. Oh, and tell Sarah Palin she can go take her Teabaggers back to the 13th century, where their beliefs are actually welcome. Read Christopher Hitchens or Dawkins, and you'll see what I mean.

Christopher Hitchens???!

......Amen!!!

Sarcasm?

No, he's just another TV-gazing idiot who got nothing out the article. He's like the moth

who got into the concert for free and heard nothing.

Irony...

That's a lazy man's answer! Don't sit back and let life pass you by, get up and learn something because that is what school is for! You are always learning, and even though I only understand half this article, it's really intriguing!

@ MikeyMike

God I hope so!

Yeah, me too Judas, me too.

I'm reminded of a sort of Daffy Definition for "sarchasm" I.E. the yawning gulf between one's intended irony and the perceived literal interpretation of a given comment.

I don't think they can as witnessed by their daily ramblings. The "universe" is mostly empty space, but many cranial cavities are even more sparsely populated.

I am a "Tea Party member" and can't say that I know of a single person who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old. There may be some, but not many. Now that that's settled, why don't you play the "race card" to further defame your betters (as usual).

I know some flat earth Tea folks - one is running in Arizona, and O'Donnel wants creationism taught. So, face it, the Tea Party is full of uneducated twits.

I just reviewed some of your previous comments. You have zero-point-sh*t right to refer to anyone else as uneducated. You, sir or madame, are one f'd - up piece of life! By comparison, and through no effort of your design, you have managed to make my doberman look like a grad student!

What happened at t=0? This is the brick wall that will never be answered; at least not in this life. It is unknowable.

It doesn't matter where it came from as no one will ever be able to know that as it is external to our universe. Maybe a good guess could be something like a black hole in another universe managed to condense that entire universe mass down into an infinitely small point, which is impossible in our universe by the laws of physics, so then it expanded back out, creating our universe. This says nothing about where that universe came from, so it's still not a good answer, but when one doesn't have the answer and knows that it is impossible to get the answer, conjecture is a fun way to pass the time.

I don't know about these intellectuals, I suspect that is just a word you use to deride people who understand things that you don't. Educate yourself and you won't need to ask questions like where it came from. No one asks where God came from, why ask where the universe came from. Both are impossible to answer from our vantage point.

I can likely tell you with a decent amount of accuracy that cannot be proven...everything has always been here and always will be, whether in it's present form or another.

What happened before the big bang ?
There you go.

http://torrent.zoink.it/BBC.Horizon.2010.What.Happened.Before.the.Big.Bang.x264.AC3.HDTV.%5BMVGroup.org%5D.torrent

It's a good question. Unanswerable.

However... it is precisely why "evolution" and "creation" are not mutually exclusive concepts. Most of the disagreement comes to whether the Bible contains literal meaning or not. Why God wouldn't speak to us in metaphors seems to be something a lot of literalistic folk can't provide a satisfactory answer.

And who cares? Where the world came from has nothing to do with salvation anyway... you only need one thing for salvation... and your opinions about Genesis have to do with it, so why do people get so uptight about it?

I totally agree with you Mark. Though I believe that God created the universe, I also believe that how we got here has nothing to do with salvation. The Bible is very literal in some places and very metaphorical in others, so it's hard to tell whether the entire creation story is literal or not.

Evolution is a thoery, creationism is not; it is doctrine. Evolution is supported by scientific fact and discoveries, Creationism is only supported by the bible. While evolution can be used as a means that a God made things into being, in science the theory of evolution cannot rely or use a God as the means to which Evolution was set into motion.

In my opinion, people, in general, have a hard time thinking about things without a beginning and an end...without creation and destruction. For example, when we are born and we grow older, we start to realize, we were a sperm and an egg that became a person, then we die. What many don't do is expand these thoughts to what is to the "left" of a sperm and egg and what is to the "right" of death. Before the sperm and egg comes the matter that was organized by living tissue that is also made up of different forms of matter...matter that has been created and converted by the sun, a comet and/or meteor impact, heat from Earth's core, water reacting with minerals, etc. Over time, the natural process of life evolves to replicate itself using the same matter that it is made of. Then, a man and a women get together and the "BIG BANG" occurs. The sperm fertilizes the egg and in 9 months, a new person. This person continues to grow on the same matter that came before it's "existence" and eventually dies. The matter that made the person is now in the ground or converted by high heat from cremation. It's still in existence, but has changed from amino acids and fatty acids, etc. to carbons and oxides, etc.

The point is that the matter never left. It didn't get created and then disappear. It simply changed from one form to another. If Freud were still around, he may have thought that the big bang theory was more a reference to a sexual act or the results of that act, than to any real scientific theory of how our "universe" formed.

Additionally, I purposely left religious views out of this example as religion pretty much gives one an easy out in explaining beginning and end. IE, God created everything and God can destroy everything. In seconds, a religious person can answer what scientists and theorists have pondered for thousands of years without reaching anything more than a theory. In my opinion, if everything has always been here in one form or another, then there never was "creation". Without the need to explain creation, there is no need for religious explanation or any other explanation for that matter...no pun intended.

Oops. Comment posted twice.

I don't see any more reason to leave the door open for a god working through evolution than I do for saying a god is spinning the planet on its axis.

The world was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He created some mountains, trees, and a Midget(sic). The Midget got bored, so FSM made some pirates to play with him. After the pirates killed the Midget, FSM made a place for him called Heaven. In Heaven FSM put a beer volcano and a stripper factory, so the Midget wouldn't get bored.

I thought everyone knew the creation story!

One might ask the same question regarding God. The creationist can only offer, "Oh . . . He's the Alpha and Omega." Well! There you go! What more proof could you want!

The question "what existed before the Universe" is meaningless. The words go together gramatically... but they make no sense.

It's like asking, what do you remember from before you were born? Your brain didn't exist then, so the question is meaningless.

Or the buddhist koan, "where does your fist go when you open your hand?" Again, a meaningless question. It didn't exist, then it existed, and then it didn't exist again. It didn't "go" anywhere.

The Big Bang is theorized as the beginning of TIME as well as space. So you're asking "what happened before time started" which is a meaningless question. The word "before" can't apply when time doesn't exist.

The universe didn't exist. Then it did exist. There is no before. There was no time. There was no space. There was no was, is, or then. There is no before.

What if we have it wrong? What if time is actually tied to the brane upon which the other 3 dimensions exist?

Creation is proven by the fact that we're here discussing it...

It's faith that tells you why. And the only people who are neutral are the agnostics... Atheism is a as much a religion as the others.

put simply..

What exploded? and where did it come from?

A singularity expanded from nothing.

Consider your questions answered in full.

Seems to me that God would be sensible to make a self regulating system that didn't need him to constantly turn dials... spin the earth on it's axis... run evolution. Whether you believe in God or not, the universe was put into motion and there you go...

Mark,

Atheism is certainly not a religion. It is the antithesis and absence of religion. The Greek roots of the term a- for "no or not" and -theos for "god", together mean a doctrine or belief which holds that there is no god.

You may very well call it a system of beliefs which guide a way of thinking, which atheism certainly does do, but that does not in any way shape or form make atheism a "religion".

Agnosticism, on the other hand, comes from a- "not" and gnosis or "knowledge". An agnostic admits that they don't know for sure whether or not there is a god, and usually an agnostic will be willing admit the possibility that there might be. We just don't know.

Atheists are sure. We know there is no god, and before you demand it, no, we do not not need to "prove" it. Mark, if you think there is a god, you show me proof that he exists and then we'll talk.

If you could prove there was a god, what would be the point? Free will would certainly evaporate. You either have faith that God exists, or faith that God doesn't exist; it's still faith.

Atheists can be as hard-line and compelled to state their universe-view as any evangelist I've ever met... they get bent out of shape about the mention of God at the drop of a hat. So in my mind the fact that they're so sure makes them no different than any religion... who are equally as sure they're right.

Agnostics... won't argue one way or the other because at their core they know there's no point to proving anything to anyone.

also my statement about what God would or would not do was merely conjecture. If God exists, it seems he would favor creating an elegant, self-regulated system...

Well, Mark, from your statement,

If God exists, it seems he would favor creating an elegant, self-regulated system...

I now take it that you are in the agnostic camp. Sorry if I jumped the gun there. In response, I would say, if we have an elegant, self regulating system (which we do) and no real evidence of anything mystical, spiritual or otherwise non-physical outside of the system, why do we need to postulate the existence of a supposed non-physical spiritual god being as the cause and creator of the system?

As I believe it was Poincare originally stated, "God? I have no need of that hypothesis."

Because there's more to God than just making the universe go.

...I'll add the phrase "for argument's sake" if it makes you uncomfortable.

Yeah, there's the whole, "Stone him for picking up firewood on the Sabbath" and "be sure to well salt the meat of your burnt offerings" bits. God is very particular about his meat being salted.

Yeah... firewood... a central tenant of major religions for sure. I remember it took weeks of Sunday school to go over stoning.

But your comment just illustrates the point that Atheists seem to have a burr up their butt... a compulsion to disprove god or discredit anyone who entertains the idea... but maybe I'm just lumping you all together... which wouldn't be fair at all... would it?

I could no more prove there was a god than I could prove that I love my wife to a determined skeptic. You either see it or you don't... and whatever effort I make to prove it, or you might make to disprove it, doesn't bring it into existence, or make it disappear.

God is unprovable... if his existence were provable (almost) everyone would fall in line, and then what's the point? But you have to concede there are interesting questions that transcend the physical world... the sources of which are equally unprovable by science... What is consciousness? What is love? What is free will? What is a soul? Humans do things that don't make sense from a strict "survival of the fittest" standpoint... why?

My gripe comes when they attack science because it doesn't agree what what was written down by a bunch of sheep herders 4,000 years ago. Or when they burn someone at the stake because the book says not to suffer a witch to live, and they think that person is a witch. Or when the cause a war because the land is considered "sacred"... the list goes on, but I think it's time to move on.

Yeah... science and religion aren't going to fix violent, stupid, and ignorant. It's not like Atheism is the answer... just look at the USSR and Stalin... there's an atheist you can be proud of.

As I indicate before though... science is a discipline meant for the observable, physical world... there's no point bring God into it.... no point in pushing him out of it except where people try to use science to prove metaphor.

Stalin was probably a Luddite too

All of the previous conjectures about God have one thing in common. They all accept the patriarchal doctrine that God is a supreme being.

And a number of people on this thread have said that God is unprovable, and have equated the existence of God with faith and authority and discipline - they say: "If there were proof of God then human beings would obey!" Why would you obey???

It is logical to admit that this being, if he exists, is a tyrant-being, is it not?

It is logical to admit, that this being, if he exists, has enslaved human beings - and I ask you all: "Why would you believe the point of view that such a being wants to put across as his position?" It makes no sense to do so! You must have your own point of view, as a being! You don't have to agree with such a being - he has his point of view and you have yours! It is the same for any being.

People can intuit what is happening in "reality". These intuitions about "reality" are expressed metaphorically - the authors of imaginative fiction are intuitively aware of an idea, even if they don't believe it has a relationship to reality. If the metaphor has meaning for others then it will make a good movie! These ideas express what many people feel is really happening - they are like big dreams, saying something to many human beings, people who are unconsciously aware of what is "going on", and who recognise, in amazement, their own unconscious feelings being expressed before their very eyes on a screen, but, as in all dreams, in metaphor.

The idea of humanity being dominated by alien beings is common - but the movie "The Matrix" (and its sequels) expressed something of an idea of a powerful being that controlled what human beings believed to be reality. Is it so hard to consciously discuss the possibility that that is what God is?! - A powerful being - but in being a being, a being like ourselves - a being that has enslaved human beings but who has not done enslaved us or done harm from his own from his own point of view?

Is it not worth seriously discussing this possibility? Is it not worth conscious and unashamed, unembarassed, and unfettered attention? And if we were to throw off all of our culturally-imposed preconceptions - then how would we be looking at religious dogma? Logically, it would be that being's point of view - and the point of view of a being, that for reasons of his own, that I can see only as insecurities, had chosen to enslave us.

If this is the state that we are all living in, is it not in our interests to investigate the existence of a plane of existence that we and he can exist on without physical bodies - as is evident from reincarnation, which is scientifically proven (see my comment above - have a look at the "Wikipedia" entry for the book "Old Souls" on this scientific evidence - thousands of scientifically well-documented cases!)?

Scientists have a blind side and so do those who fund scientific research. But if you want to know the secrets of the universe, you have to look at the universe with an open mind, and science has to stop being afraid to confront God and religious dogma.

Alright Liz,

this is the second time you've mentioned it, so I took your advice, read the wiki page and even found several reviews of the book on Amazon.com. The writer/journalist, Schroder, claims to be skeptical in his point of view, but is apparently somewhat swayed by what he sees, hears and experiences.

I'll admit, I don't, for one second, think there could anything to this but quakery and lies, but based on the posted reviews, which seemed rational in their assessment, maybe I should read the book.

One more thing I will say for the present, as has been stated by many others before me, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. A few coincidental birthmarks and some spooky anecdotes about supposedly remembered addresses do not in my mind constitute extraordinary proof.

I'll have to get back to you.

Thousands of cases in the field and a lifetime's scientific research! - Tom Schroder is a journalist reporting on the scientific research, and he is only touching the surface of a vast amount of research material. He investigates just a sample of the research in the field himself, but the voluminous research material itself, covering many decades of research, stands on its own merits. Tom Schroder is really just doing his job as a writer and journalist by popularising and humanising a lifetime's scientific research. In conducting his journalistic inquiry, he is also undertaking a personal journey of discovery, which changes his perceptions and his understanding of reality - he is not claiming to be a scientist himself, rather an open-minded investigator. And his reactions are those of a human being - In the final chapters of the book he comes out in favour of reincarnation being a real and commonplace phenomenon.

I have my own memory of living in previous "incarcerations" (as I see reincarnation) and those memories are not different, in terms of their qualities, to other memories. If you have any memories that don't seem to fit anywhere - that couldn't possibly, in terms of your life-history, have happened - these are the memories that you will most likely dismiss as irrelevant, but the more you examine what is in them, the more you will remember, though it is stressful to do so, and since there is no benefit in doing so, you may not want to bother subjecting yourself to such unnecessary mental duress. But they are like doorways - only you have to prise them open! You can, it is possible, remember every "word" of every conversation you ever had. I never know them in other than my present-day English vocabulary, just as it was the vocabulary of the time that I used and understood then - it is the word-meaning of the conversation that I recall to mind word for word, not the language that I no longer speak. When you recall a conversation, you remember yourself saying those words, and then you know why you said them, so you know who you are in that situation. Just as what I see all seems like the "present" - it feels like it is my present incarceration - only examining the memories shows that the content of them is not of the present day. Among my memories are very painful memories, far more painful than memories of my present "incarnation", but that is because it was with people I deeply cared about, and people I knew deeply, from more than one incarnation. And when you know someone who means something to you, with whom your recognition, of each other, transcends death, then other relationships mean very little by comparison. There are people who we are related to throughout time, transcending the physical plane, and it is these other beings who matter to us: When we become disincarnate we can be reunited with them. We are immortal beings, as these case studies prove to anyone with an open mind - these were not collected as a scientific hoax - it is scientific evidence like any other evidence. How much evidence do you need?!

I definitely think that since y=mx+b that must mean that algebra is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. because the (TV show) the Big Bang Theory is correct in somethings (especially the things that Sheldon says) it must mean that since E=Mc3 that ITS ALL THE SYSTEMS FAULT! FTW

its not our galaxy that is moving as unimaginable speeds (it is moving but its not the reason for its vast movement thru space) the fabric of space time is what is expanding, here is a good analogy, take a ballon blow a little air into it use a perma marker and mark dots are various distances all over the ballon. Now blow one full breath into the balloon then observe(or measure for really good view point) the distance between the points, reapeat this over and over till the ballon is blown up as much as possible. Now notice that the distance have increased drastically between the points.

You can also take tennis balls poke holes in them and sting onto bungee cord at alternating distances, then stretch. Distance increase a little or more depending in how far each ball is from each other.

That is why out galaxy is so far away its not that our galaxy was flung at super fast speed its that the fabric of space time is expanding thus increasing the distances between galaxies.

Something that's crossed my mind recently involves the rate of expansion of the universe. The rate of how fast the universe is expanding is the basis for thinking that there is dark energy, because the rate is increasing, something must be causing it. I've been wondering if the calculation is spot on. Does it take into account the fact that we are moving in relation to the object being measured? Anywhere we look, everything is moving away from us but would the speed at which it's moving away be different if it was based on a measurement from a fixed point. It just seems like the universe continually expanding faster and faster wouldn't be sustainable. If the rate of expansion was less, then it might be more likely that we'll end up back at the Big Crunch (causing a new big bang and a new universe) instead of the Big Freeze (continue to expand until max entropy and all things dissapate away to nothing.) Does this make sense to anyone else besides me?

If matter cannot travel faster than light, how did we end up so far apart and looking back in time all at the same time?

Pirate C's answer makes sense, I think, although it stretches the imagination to visualise the universe in this way. (Pardon the pun.)

But also, the travelling of light/an image would be in one direction, in terms of our observation (i.e. towards us), while, if the universe is expanding, our "movement" would be away from the observed point, while its "movement" would also be away from us, at the same time - thus "two-directional", if that makes any sense.

What if the galaxy we saw was us 13.6 billion years ago and space was a giant circle

I was contemplating that very thing after having that 3 musketeers bar.

Purpose? It's purpose is clearly to boggle the minds of little grains of sand like us.

Was that 3 musketeers bar by chance home made...with pot and dipped in acid (of the hallucinogenic kind)? ;)

Good lord, I hope not! It's from the snack machine at work.

RonC- don't try the mars bar!!- I tried to warn you in caps but Vine said I was YELLING!

Doesn't anyone believe in God anymore ? On another subject that blows me away is finding fossils that are considered to be 50 million years old. However if the earth is only 600,000 years old how is that possible? The general consensus is that creatures roamed the earth up to 100 million years ago.

Mason,

it's pretty well understood by all who accept radiometric dating as valid that the earth is almost 5 billion years old.

I don't know where you're coming up with this figure of 600,000 years. Biblical literalists who try to calculate based on the number of generational "begats" listed in the bible between Adam and Jesus, usually cite a figure of something like 6,473. What makes them so sure is beyond my comprehension, but one's thing's for certain, they're wrong.

Mike, I'm also a big fan of this stuff, I thought I was pretty good at math but the quantum theory formulas pertaining to particles and cosmology are way over my head. A few thoughts, though: 1) you don't need to go the speed of light to cause red shift. Think of a car traveling at 10 mph with the horn blaring. Your ear can probably pick up a slight changing in tone as it passes, but it is going what, 2% the speed of sound? 2) The laws of physics haven't changed since the very beginning, what has changed is the energy level of matter/energy. As it expanded and cooled, at a point it reached a point where the quarks settled down enough to be able to form protons and electrons. Before that happened, they weren't subject to the same rules (like speed limits) that matter has to obey and still be matter.

I need to read Hawking's new book. He has some interesting ideas about spacetime, gravity, matter and energy, and how they all could inter-relate.

@ A Veteran, I will tell you that sometimes when I think about this stuff I get freaked out, trying to imagine how big the universe is, I almost get the coming ons of a panic attack, it humbles one really fast to realize how insignificant we all in the scheme of the universe yet how awesome and wonderful we all are that we are here on this planet and able to try to comprehend the vast treasures or knowledge and growth that the Universe holds for our species.

Here, here!! Well put..

Pirate - I agree totally. Sometimes on a clear night I just stare up at the moon and as I tune out everything else, I can mentally zoom out to envision the vastness between me and the moon, the earth and the sun, and and it's a very humbling feeling of smallness in a vast universe. But even that can't take into account the scope of scale beyond our galaxy.

You are confusing hypothesis with theory. A theory is what one or more hypotheses become once they have been verified and accepted to be true. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers.

Good job, Wolfman. Everything this article discussed is still hypothetical, not theory. And it would have been nice if Boyle would have explained it all in lay terms, and answered questions like "How long would it take for the light emitted from that galazy to reach the Earth?" He needed to use some examples and cut the astrophysicist-speak, and he should have answered the most important question anyone should ask: "So what?"

Zing!

Bazinga!

Who is .... 2112?

He proves it's possible? Doesn't sound like he proved anything other than there's a chance it might.

NASA is going to launch a new infared space telescope "The James Web Space Telescope" That will make the hubble telescope look like a Model T. It will be launching sometime in 2014 (2016 government time) and we supposidly will have it orbit the sun and see all estimated space (Yes thats right, see the end of space/time!)

If you add up all forms of energy in the universe today (mass, dark energy, gravity, negative gravity, etc...) the total is exactly 0 (ZERO). So today's universe is created out of nothing. This may be a cycle repeated ad infinitum. Also, we know pretty much the physics of what happened down to a fraction of a second after the big band (thanks to the particle accelerators, and predictions as to what happens at various levels of energy and what particles are created at those energies). It is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that will limit how far we ever can drill down to the real t=0.