and expanding ever since. E=mc2 – Search Videos (bing.com)
Damn you… your place in time and space.
Many cancer patients that visit this blog tell me these are the type of post that take my mind of having cancer. SO, keep it up Ken. Also, I have an inquisitive mind that is always active. And the information in this post is the best that I have found to explain Einstein Theory of Relativity E=mc².
But is it possible to see back to the beginning of time?
The Big Bang is a term used to define the beginning of our universe as we know it. Scientists believe it occurred about 13.8 billion years ago. It is the most widely accepted theory among physicists to explain the history of our universe. The name of his theory is
a bit misleading, however, because it suggests that some sort of explosion, like fireworks, created the universe.
The Big Bang more closely represents the appearance of rapidly expanding space everywhere in the universe. The environment immediately after the Big Bang was similar to a cosmic fog that covered the universe, making it hard for light to travel beyond it. Eventually, galaxies, stars and planets started to grow.
That’s why this era in the universe is called the “cosmic dark ages.” As the universe continued to expand, the cosmic fog began to rise, and light was eventually able to travel freely through space. In fact, a few satellites have observed the light left by the Big Bang, about 380,000 years after it occurred. These telescopes were built to detect the splotchy leftover glow from the Big Bang, whose light can be tracked in the microwave band.
However, even 380,000 years after the Big Bang, there were no stars and galaxies.
The universe was still a very dark place. The cosmic dark ages wouldn’t end until
a few hundred million years later, when the first stars and galaxies began to form.
The James Webb Space Telescope was not designed to observe as far back as the Big Bang, but instead to see the period when the first objects in the universe began to form and emit light. Before this time period, there is little light for the James Webb Space Telescope to observe, given the conditions of the early universe and the lack of galaxies and stars.
Peering back to the time period close to the Big Bang is not simply a matter of having
a larger mirror – astronomers have already done it using other satellites that observe microwave emission from very soon after the Big Bang.
So, the James Webb Space Telescope observing the universe a few hundred million years after the Big Bang isn’t a limitation of the telescope. Rather, that’s actually the telescope’s mission. It’s a reflection of where in the universe we expect the first light from stars and galaxies to emerge.
By studying ancient galaxies, scientists hope to understand the unique conditions of the early universe and gain insight into the processes that helped them flourish. That includes the evolution of supermassive black holes, the life cycle of stars, and what exoplanets – worlds beyond our solar system – are made of.
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer?
Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.
Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too.
We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
Adi Foord, Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The post Could a telescope ever see the beginning of time? An astronomer’s explanation appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.
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Astronomers are pretty sure what happened after the Big Bang,
but what came before?
What are the leading theories for the causes of the Big Bang?
About 13.8 billion years ago the Universe started with a bang, kicked the doors in,
brought fancy cheeses and a bag of ice, spiked the punch bowl and invited the new
neighbors over for all-nighter to encompass all all-nighters from that point forward.
But what happened before that?
What was going on before the Big Bang?
Usually, we tell the story of the Universe by starting at the Big Bang and then talking
about what happened after. Similarly and completely opposite to how astronomers view the Universe… by standing in the present and looking backwards. From here, the furthest we can look back is to the cosmic microwave background, which is about 380,000 years after the big bang.
Before that we couldn’t hope to see a thing, the Universe was just too hot and dense to be transparent. Like pea soup. Soup made of delicious face burning high energy everything.
In traditional stupid earth-bound no-Tardis life in an unsatisfactory fashion, we can’t actually observe the origin of the Universe from our place in time and space.
Fortunately, the thinky types have come up with some ideas, and they’re all one part crazy, one part mind bendy, and 100% bananas. The first idea is that it all began as a kind of quantum fluctuation that inflated to our present universe.
Artistic view of a radiating black hole. Credit: NASA
Something very, very subtle expanding over time resulting in, as an accidental byproduct, our existence. The alternate idea is that our universe began within a black hole of an older universe.
I’m gonna let you think about that one. Just let your brain simmer there.
There was a universe “here”, that isn’t our universe, then that universe became a
black hole… and from that black hole formed us and EVERYTHING around us.
Literally, everything around us. In every direction we look, and even the stuff
we just assume to be out there.
Here’s another one. We see particles popping into existence here in our Universe.
What if, after an immense amount of time, a whole Universe’s worth of particles all popped into existence at the same time. Seriously… an immense amount of time,
with lots and lots of “almost” universes that didn’t make the cut.
BICEP2 Telescope at twilight at the South Pole, Antarctica
(Credit: Steffen Richter, Harvard University)
More recently, the BICEP2 team observed what may be evidence of inflation in
the early Universe. Like any claim of this gravity, the result is hotly debated.
If the idea of inflation is correct, it is possible that our universe is part of a much larger multiverse. And the most popular form would produce a kind of eternal inflation, where universes are springing up all the time. Ours would just happen to be one of them.
It is also possible that asking what came before the big bang is much like asking what is north of the North Pole. What looks like a beginning in need of a cause may just be due to our own perspective. We like to think of effects always having a cause, but the Universe might be an exception. The Universe might simply be. Because.
This illustration of the front view of the James Webb Space Telescope shows its sun shield
and golden mirrors. NASA/ESA/CSA/Northrop Grumman © Provided by Astronomy
The James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST for short, is one of the most advanced telescopes ever built. Planning for JWST began over 25 years ago, and construction efforts spanned over a decade. It was launched into space on Dec. 25, 2021, and within a month arrived at its final destination: 930,000 miles away from Earth. Its location in space allows it a relatively unobstructed view of the universe.
The telescope design was a global effort, led by NASA, and intended to push the boundaries of astronomical observation with revolutionary engineering. Its mirror is massive – about 21 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter. That’s nearly three times the size of
the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990 and is still working today.
The James Webb Space Telescope is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. Its high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments allow it to view objects
too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope.
This enables investigations across many fields of astronomy and cosmology,
such as observation of the first stars and the formation of the first galaxies,
and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.
It’s a telescope’s mirror that allows it to collect light. JWST – Search Videos (bing.com)
is so big that it can “see” the faintest and farthest galaxies and stars in the universe.
Its state-of-the-art instruments can reveal information about the composition,
temperature and motion of these distant cosmic objects.
As an astrophysicist, I’m continually looking back in time to see what stars, galaxies and supermassive black holes looked like when their light began its journey toward Earth, and I’m using that information to better understand their growth and evolution. For me, and for thousands of space scientists, the James Webb Space Telescope is a window to that unknown universe.
Time travel: Just how far back can JWST peer into the cosmos and into the past?
About 13.5 billion years. A telescope does not show stars, galaxies and exoplanets
as they are right now.
Instead, astronomers are catching a glimpse of how they were in the past.
It takes time for light to travel across space and reach our telescopes.
In essence, that means a look into space is also a trip back in time.
This is a JWST image of NGC 604, a star-forming region about 2.7 million light years
from Earth. NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
This is even true for objects that are quite close to us.
The light you see from the Sun left it about 8 minutes, 20 seconds earlier.
That’s how long it takes for the Sun’s light to travel to Earth.
You can easily do the math on this.
All light – whether sunlight, a flashlight or a light bulb in your house – travels at 186,000 miles (almost 300,000 kilometers) per second. That’s just over 11 million miles (about 18 million kilometers) per minute. The Sun is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth. That comes out to about 8 minutes, 20 seconds.
Related video: Uranus In 4K – James Webb Space Telescope Sees The Planet,Rings And Moons (Space) – Search Videos (bing.com)
But the farther away something is, the longer its light takes to reach us. That’s why the light we see from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to us aside from our Sun, is 4 years old; that is, it’s about 25 trillion miles (approximately 40 trillion kilometers) away from Earth, so that light takes just over four years to reach us. Or, as scientists like to say, four light years.
Most recently, JWST observed Earendel, one of the farthest stars ever detected.
The light that JWST sees from Earendel is about 12.9 billion years old.
The James Webb Space Telescope is looking much farther back in time than
previously possible with other telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope.
For example, although Hubble can see objects 60,000 times fainter than the human
eye is able, the JWST can see objects almost nine times fainter than even Hubble can.
How can they predict this years in advance but not find a cure for cancer?