Spyman

Well, you might want to skip some unnecessary steps then, like the one in post #23. The Universe was smaller in the past so the CMBR must also have been smaller, but the Universe is filled with the CMBR so the CMBR is huuuuuuge if we talk about the size of it, it's much bigger than what we can observe both today and what we could observe in the past. Our view of the CMBR was smaller in the past but that doesn't make the CMBR itself smaller, as time goes we are able to see a larger and larger view of the Universe and the CMBR. How much of the Universe or the CMBR we are able to observe does not change the actual size of them. If you look at the diagram again you can notice that the Distant Galaxy and the Milky Way are observing different zones of the CMBR with a large overlapping part and the past location of the Distant Galaxy is at that time not yet able to view more than a part of what it will be able to overlook in the future. Images emitted from them in that past time are observable at Earth today and those were also observable in the past view of the distant galaxy.

Don't play games Michel, the image might be wrong on some small detail or angle but as a crude sketch it's correct. Why don't you get on with it and tell us what is troubling you instead...

Martin you guessed correct, the image is downloaded from Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial and then edited with Microsoft Paint. ---------- The added lightcone of the past view from the distant galaxy looks good.

Earth? CMBR? You said twice that it "is not the point". I am sorry but I don't seem to understand, maybe you can explain further and focus on one single question?

No, the galaxy were receiving radiation with an age of 1 billion years that was 10 times hotter than today and all surrounding galaxies both inside and outside of the galaxy's observable horizon were 10 times closer to the observer and each other. Please read my post #3 again. No, a distant observer have a different location and as such the past cone of the distant galaxy can only be partially inside our past cone. A distant observer will always be able to see a little further in the direction of the distance separating us than we are at the same time. We might however, depending on difference in time of observation, be able to have a greater view and in our time observe more than the entire field of view which the distant observer had in a more remote past time.

A galaxy like UDFy-38135539, from which the light took 13.1 billion years to reach us, is a galaxy that was about ~3 billion lightyears distant when the light we observe now was emitted and it is now thought to be ~30 billions lightyears distant. (Cosmos Calculator Omega=0.27 Lambda=0.73 Hubble=71 Redshift=8.55) However at that time ~13 billion years ago we would not have been able to observe UDFy-38135539 at its location ~3 billion lightyears distant from us, what we would have been able to see back then is an even older image, from a closer location in a more remote past, of the matter that later became this galaxy.

"Galaxies show signs of being composed largely of a roughly spherically symmetric, centrally concentrated halo of dark matter with the visible matter concentrated in a disc at the center." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

Martin said it more elegantly than I can, but YES the Universe was on larger scale more crowded in its early days. There would be fewer galaxies around that had already formed but the building material was there and starting to accumulate in the struggle for domination between gravity and expansion. In close neighborhoods gravity was winning and forming bound systems and structures but on larger distances objects continued to get separated by expansion. The Great Cosmic Battle The Stelliferous Era As the Universe reaches its adolescence in the early Stelliferous Era, gravity finally makes some headway against the universal tendencies toward disorganization. During the first billion years, galaxies are created as gravity overcomes the background expansion of the Universe. Gravity also organizes these galaxies into bound clusters and cosmic structures on even larger size scales. http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/0001/cosmic.html

I suspect you are not asking about how stars, galaxies and stuff in general looked like and instead are more interested in the size and range of our observable universe back then. (From your last discussion of the Big Bang theory here.) Since the suggested "old" time is very close to the Recombination era light would not yet have had enough time to reach us from larger distances so the deep field of observations should have been pitch black, in essence there could only be light reaching us from a little less than 600 million lightyears "appearing" distance. With "appearing" distance" I mean the distance a photon had to travel through space before it could reach us. The Cosmos Calculator don't seem to go that far back, but at ~1 billion years after the Bang our "true" range of our observable universe only reached ~410 million lightyears distant around us. With "true" I mean the actual distance that emitting objects was located from us, when the light we observe now was emitted. The matter emitting the CMBR would appear to be 1 billion lightyears distant but it was less than 100 million lightyears distant when the CMBR was emitted and would be ~3.4 billion lightyears distant when we observe that radiation that took 1 billion years to reach us. This distance of the CMBR is the "proper" range of our observable universe. With "proper" distance I mean the actual distance emitting objects have reached from us now, when we make the observation.

Dark Matter are some cind of yet unknown matter that we can't see, it doesn't interact like normal matter so there is no light reflected or emitted from it. But we know it must be there because we can measure how it affects normal matter with its gravity. Dark Energy is even less known, all we know is that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate and the best explanation for this is Dark Energy, but we don't know what it is or how it manages with such a feat. Here are some links with better explanations and more details: "Dark Matter In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is matter that is inferred to exist from gravitational effects on visible matter and background radiation, but is undetectable by emitted or scattered electromagnetic radiation." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter "Dark Energy In physical cosmology, astronomy and celestial mechanics, dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the universe.[1] Dark energy is the most popular way to explain recent observations and experiments that the universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy "What Is Dark Energy? More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery." "What Is Dark Matter? We are much more certain what dark matter is not than we are what it is. First, it is dark, meaning that it is not in the form of stars and planets that we see." http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/

No Michel, you don't seem to understand what the basics of the Big Bang theory represents. Secondly, I have not mentioned my personal opinion or made any judgements on said theory, I have only tried to explain it to you. It is a simple and crude picture to show the basics of Big Bang theory, it doesn't have to be in scale. Yes the CMBR is a little large and to far from the Bang, but it doesn't matter, the principle is what is important. A distant galaxy can be located more or less anywhere on our horizon, it doesn't have to be closer to the CMBR, a galaxy 5 billion lightyears distant is a distant galaxy. The inflation phase is behind the CMBR and even though the CMBR is off scale, the inflation phase is still behind it in my picture, it's located inside the black part on top above the CMBR. It's important to note that there is a large change in rate of expansion on both sides of the CMBR, there is no mysterious "curtain" hiding how the expansion has slowed down from a higher rate or how space were smaller further back in time. The expansion of space has not been linear and as such there can't be any straigh lines, the expansion have been sloving down since the Bang and then started to accelerate again some ~5 billion years ago. The acceleration is so far very small compared to the initial expansion and especially relative inflation. Horizontal relations are crucial for understanding how space is expanding. The difference between "distance when light was emitted" and "distance when light was received" is needed to show that space was smaller or bigger in the past. Until you are able to understand this concept there is really no point in arguing anything else regarding the Big Bang theory. The horizontal lines shows how time progress. I se no reason for you to make things more complicated when you don't yet understand the simple version. Yes, I made this picture for explanation, but the concept of the Big Bang theory is made from real observations, there is no hidden agenda by a huge secret society of all astronomers, cosmologists and scientist around the world, trying to hide the truth of the Big Bang from ordinary people. If you strighten the curved lines you end up with a steady state universe without expansion of space. I don't understand why you want a square diagram, you should try to understand how space changes instead of messing with time. Light travel distance is NOT the proper distance, "distance when light was emitted" and "distance when light was received" are the REAL distances in those two events, Light travel distance is the distance when light was emitted together with the distance space has expanded while light traveled across it. The displacement of light changes as the rate of expansion changes and since the rate of expansion is not thought to be the same there is nothing bizarre at all. The lines are not parallel if space is expanding, which is what the Big Bang theory is about and it is the most able model to explain observable phenoma with the knowledge we currently have. I think most people read up a little more about the Big Bang theory before they come busting in here claiming that it's ridiculous nonsense. My picture IS compatible with Sisyphus's image in post #30, the CMBR is a horizon and in my picture we only see it from Earth's perspective. An alien in the galaxy we are observing would observe a different CMBR and in that view we would be the ones closer to the CMBR. When looking at this diagram I notice that space is smaller in the past leading to that at some point in the remote past both the Earth and the distant galaxy will occupy the same location or at least be very close. How does that fit with your claim that the Universe was bigger in the past?

Quote of the Year.

What cind of nothingness can gravity exist and function in? The authors write: Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Design_(book)

We don't know if there really exists true pure singularities or what would happen if two such exotic things get close together. Singularities often indicate that a theory or mathematical concept is used beyond its capability or is lacking some information, therefor it is thought that our current theory of gravity can't correctly describe the center of a Black Hole. However when two Black Holes gets close enough their mutual gravitation will create a new Event Horizon enclosing both masses. The Event Horizon is not a physical object, it's a limit where gravity gets strong enough to hold back light, and as such it will always be surrounding the mass creating it. According to current observations Dark Energy is forcing the Universe to expand with an accelerating rate, leading to already existing Black Holes to get further and further apart, whether the Universe is curved or not.

Instead of discussing the ridiculous confusing nonsense of Horror, (I am sure it won't drive nowhere), I just want to point out that I agree, I don't see any reason for you to put faith in anything you don't understand. But, IMHO without the knowledge you are not qualified to judge it either.

The circle of the past view is always bigger than the circle of the present view, but that doesn't prove that the circle emitting the past view actually was physically bigger in the past than what it is now in the present. Let's make a thought experiment: What if we run a huge map pin straight through the Earth, locking it from rotation and firmly secure its position in space. Attached to the pin we have a rigid steel chain reaching 10 billion lightyears out into empty space. In the middle and at the far end of the chain we weld tight in place identical space probes. The probes constantly beams down video feeds of their clocks, which are synchronized to Earth time. After 10 billion years we can start to recieve two video feeds revealing one clock running 5 billion years late and one clock running 10 billion years late. Now tell me, why do you think the length of the chain is shrinking over time ? ---------- Agree. Agree. No, that would only indicate that the Universe is expanding less, at a slower rate with a smaller redshift. If the Universe starts to contract we will observe blueshifts. No, that doesn't make any sense at all, there is no reason that more distant objects should be less redshifted when the Universe is expanding, the amount of red/blue-shift indicates how fast the Universe was changing at that time and not if it actually was physically bigger or smaller.

Sorry to be unclear, I tried to focus on your statement that the Universe seems to be bigger in the past, of which you still don't seem to understand why it is wrong. I don't know how to explain it to you any better than what I already has done. Maybe instead you could try to explain why an more distant image from an earlier time would conclude that the image must have arrived from a larger place? (Or at least from a distant further away than where it seems to be from today.) There are two different Big Bangs, the first is about the Bang event itself, how the Universe came into being and the second is about the evolution of the Universe after it's "birth" from this small and hot state, which is the theory of the Big Bang. We don't know how the Universe was created, there are several highly speculative and different competing ideas of that part. What we can model and test however is that if we go back in time roughly 13.7 billion years then the Universe was much more dense and hotter than today. "A tale of two big bangs Whenever you hear or read about cosmology, there is one distinction you should have in the back of your mind - otherwise, matters might get a bit confusing: The term "big bang" has two slightly different meanings, and the answer to questions like "Did the big bang really happen" depends crucially on which of the two big bangs you are talking about. Did the big bang really happen? If you are talking about the big bang phase, the hot early universe as described by well-known physical theories (or, if you include inflation, by extrapolation from those theories), then there is good evidence that, yes, nearly 14 billion years ago, the cosmos developed in just the way described by the cosmological models (the main exhibits are the original abundances of light elements as deduced from astronomical observation, the distribution of far-away galaxies and the existence and properties of the so-called cosmic background radiation). Whether or not there really was a big bang singularity is a totally different question. Most cosmologists would be very surprised if it turned out that our universe really did have an infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitely curved beginning. Commonly, the fact that a model predicts infinite values for some physical quantity indicates that the model is too simple and fails to include some crucial aspect of the real world. Thus, while some cosmologists do not have a problem with assuming that our universe began in a singular state, most are convinced that the big bang singularity is an artefact - to be replaced by a more accurate description once quantum gravity research has made suitable progress. To be replaced with what? Nobody knows for sure. In some models, we can go infinitely far into the past (one example is presented in the spotlight text Avoiding the big bang). In others, the big bang is replaced by a beginning of the universe which avoids all infinities, but in which time itself is rather different from what we are used to (some more information about this can be found in the spotlight text Searching for the quantum beginning of the universe)." http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/big_bangs/?set_language=en "Misconceptions about the Big Bang Forty years ago this July, scientists announced the discovery of definitive evidence for the expansion of the universe from a hotter, denser, primordial state. They had found the cool afterglow of the big bang: the cosmic microwave background radiation. Since this discovery, the expansion and cooling of the universe has been the unifying theme of cosmology, much as Darwinian evolution is the unifying theme of biology." http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~charley/papers/LineweaverDavisSciAm.pdf When we talk about the Bang event then we have gone beyond our current capabilities but when dealing with the evolution of the Universe from the "primeval atom" then it is well tested. "Observational evidence The earliest and most direct kinds of observational evidence are the Hubble-type expansion seen in the redshifts of galaxies, the detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background, the abundance of light elements (see Big Bang nucleosynthesis), and today also the large scale distribution and apparent evolution of galaxies which are predicted to occur due to gravitational growth of structure in the standard theory. These are sometimes called "the four pillars of the Big Bang theory"." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang Well, it depends of which Big Bang we are talking about, when speaking of the Big Bang theory then space is still expanding and we are still inside it and as such we are still located right on top of it today. If you mean the ignition of our Universe, the event of the Bang itself, then it happened ~13.7 billion years ago but at that time it happened to this place in space where we are located today too. And since you posted the Image from Wiki and state that: "And there is a very accurate relationship between space & time. Space expands with time, and objects get closer to each other as much we go back in time." Then you must understand that space was smaller and not bigger in the past, as is contrary to your earlier statement: "a universe wider and wider as much I look far away, and wider & wider as much I look in the past." As I have tried to explain, the Big Bang theory is about how the Universe has developed over time, we have models for how space has expanded and can calculate how far away they were when the light was emitted, but the distance we measure now only reveals how much space the image has traveled through to reach us. If space has expanded or contracted during the travel time of the image then the distance we measure from the travel time would not be accurate. The important part is that when doing the calculations, the two galaxies were closer together in the past than what they seem to be and they are actually even more distanced today. Hmmm, you are arguing two different things at the same time. I suggest that you drop the singularity idea or other aspects of the "creation" itself which currently is beyound or at least on the border of our knowledge and instead concentrate on how the Universe changed from shortly after that moment to today. (If you don't want to drop that question then try to separate them to avoid confusion.) We don't know the size of the Universe, it could be infinite or huuuuuuuuuge like you say and we are only able to view a very tiny little part of it. But after the creation it was there in it's primeval state and nothing has been added or removed afterwards, the only changes are of configuration. And as such it could have been infinite or huuuuuuuuuge at that state, however we do know from observation that distances between objects is growing which leads to the conclusion that the Universe was more dense back in the remote past and is wider and more empty now. I pointed out the reversal of time to make you think about how the Universe would appear differently in such a simulation instead of this movie where we travel further and further from Earth and see younger and younger features. Logic says that since light has a finite speed then images from further distances has traveled longer in space and are therefor older, making the objects in it look younger than they do today. Logic says that the Universe exists now and since light has a finite speed, then light will arrive here on Earth from more and more distant parts of the Universe as more and more time passes by. Logic can not conclude from two totally different galaxies of different distance from us and thus of different ages, that the Universe must have been larger or smaller in the past. Logic says that when from observation the Universe seems to be growing in size, then it must have been smaller a long time ago and will get bigger in the future. "Cosmological horizon The cosmological horizon, (also known as the particle horizon) is the maximum distance from which particles could have traveled to the observer in the age of the universe. It represents the boundary between the observable and the unobservable regions of the universe. The existence, properties, and significance of a cosmological horizon depend on the particular cosmological model being discussed. In terms of comoving distance, the particle horizon is equal to the conformal time η0 that has passed since the Big Bang, times the speed of light c. The quantity η0 is given by, [math]\eta_0 = \int_{0}^{t_0}\frac{dt'}{a(t')}[/math] where a(t) is the scale factor of the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric, and we have taken the Big Bang to be at t = 0. In other words, the particle horizon recedes constantly as time passes, and the observed fraction of the universe always increases. The particle horizon differs from the event horizon in that the particle horizon represents the largest comoving distance from which light could have reached the observer by a specific time, while the event horizon is the largest comoving distance from which light emitted now can ever reach the observer." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe It has already been covered and explained twice but here is the explanation again: "Recombination (cosmology) In cosmology, recombination refers to the epoch at which charged electrons and protons in the universe first formed electrically neutral hydrogen atoms. After the Big Bang, the universe was a hot, dense plasma of photons, electrons, and protons. The interaction of photons with the plasma made the universe effectively opaque to radiation. As the universe expanded, it also cooled. Eventually, the universe cooled to the point that the formation of neutral hydrogen was energetically favored, and the fraction of free electrons and protons as compared to neutral hydrogen decreased to about 1 part in 10,000. Shortly after, photons decoupled from matter in the universe, which leads to recombination sometimes being called photon decoupling, although recombination and photon decoupling are distinct events. Once photons decoupled from matter, they traveled freely through the universe without interacting with matter, and constitute what we observe today as cosmic microwave background radiation. Recombination occurred when the universe was roughly 380,000 years old, or at a redshift of z = 1,100." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombination_(cosmology) The Horizon problem is dealing with why very different parts of the CMBR seems to have been connected in a remote past and yet they are separated with great distances.

Actually we don't "completely" disagree, the movie doesn't show the Universe as how it is now, it shows how it appear to us now and since distant parts are far away those images comes from a remote past, this we agree on. But we are not moving through time when we look at more distant parts, we see them as they where a long time ago and not how the Universe should look as compared to if we actually should make a simulation where time was in reverse. We observe these distant objects as they where when the Universe was young, thus the image is arriving from a time closer to the Big Bang but neither the distant object at the time of the image or we on Earth today are physically any closer or more distant to the Big Bang, in terms of distance in space. I don't understand your question, of course the Universe is bigger than Earth. The bubble surrounding Earth in the movie at 3:36 is the Cosmic Microwave Backgroud Radiation, which is emitted from a shell surrounding this place that later became our solarsystem. Our cosmic horizon has always been bigger than our location. No, we are NOT observing that space are growing when we go back in time, we are unable to make such observations since we can't travel backwards in time and measure space. What we can observe is different layers of distance from different ages and according to their redshifts their distances seems to inrease. The Big Bang theory does not claim that if we look up towards a galaxy like UDFy-38135539, from which the light took 13.1 billion years to reach us, that it was 13.1 billion lightyears distant 13.1 billion years ago. According to Big Bang theory it was more like ~3 billion lightyears distant when the light was emitted and is now ~30 billions lightyears distant. (Cosmo calculator Omega=0.27 Lambda=0.73 Hubble=71 Redshift=8.55) In a more distant view we are seeing objects as they were in a more remote past but not how far away they where when the light we see were emitted from them. 1) We can not first look up from the North pole at light 10 billion years old from a galaxy and then look down from the South pole at light 10 billion years old from a galaxy, to finally conclude that they where 20 billion lightyears apart 10 billion years ago. We don't know how distant they are now or how distant they were back then when the light was emitted. 2) And we can not compare galaxies with light 5 billion years old with galaxies that has 10 billion years old light and conclude that because the older light has traveled further the remote Universe must have been larger. All we know is that the older light was emitted from a larger distance than the younger light. 3) What we can do is measure their redshift and conclude that they are receding from us and as such they should have been closer in the past and likely are more distant today. From several measurements of different redshifts from different distances we can then build a model of how the Universe develops over time. ---------- No, if the geometry of space was rigid and fixed then you would be correct, but we have discovered that the geometry of space is highly dynamic and able to both expand and contract. ---------- The sphere of our observable universe is growing every year but the recent discovered acceleration of expansion will eventually bring very distant stuff outside of it, making us see less and less even though we continue to view an increasing volume, since it will be emptier. Yes, an alien today, on a planet that is 13 billion lightyears away in proper distance, will view a different but similar Universe of the same age and an alien 13 billion years ago, on a planet close to the place Earth exists in today, would be able to view a much younger part of the Universe than what we are currently viewing.

LOL - Everyone can easily scroll up to your post #23 and read what you actually said: Which are totally wrong on at least three accounts as I told you in my post #24. The decent thing to do would be to admitt your fault instead of twisting words and trying to change what you meant afterwards.

This is how I interpret the movie: We are not moving through time towards the Big Bang, instead we are moving through our observable universe, from its center at Earth and outward through the boundary of our cosmic horizon. At time 3:36 the movie shows our cosmic horizon in space from the outside and yet unknown part of the Universe and then we start to move back inside towards Earth again. Nowhere in the movie am I able to see any inconsistency at all with the Big Bang theory and especially I am not able to see galaxies to be generally more spread out at distances further away from Earth or any claims that the remote past of the Universe should have been wider or that anything is "getting bigger & bigger as much we go back in time". ----- If you throw a rock into a lake and observe the waves moving outward like rings, the outermost rings have the greatest radius and are the oldest and yet they were smaller the further back in time we go, closer towards the impact time of the rock. I am not able to understand why you think that because the rings we see are bigger and older the further away we are looking, it then somehow implies that the rings themselves would grow or be bigger if we should go back in time. ----- [EDIT] This is how the Known Universe looks from our viewpoint: "In more recent studies the universe appears as a collection of giant bubble-like voids separated by sheets and filaments of galaxies, with the superclusters appearing as occasional relatively dense nodes. This network is clearly visible in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. In the figure a 3-D reconstruction of the inner parts of the survey is shown, revealing an impressive view on the cosmic structures in the nearby universe. Several superclusters stand out, such as the Sloan Great Wall, the largest structure in the universe known to date." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

No, I am not an expert on cameras and I am not claiming that longer exposures will improve the quality of an image. I would hope that the people behind the two images presented was skilled and used the proper shutter time. Your comparison with the images is not fair to the question asked in the OP, since the first image is not taken from the same location with such higher speed that distance is compressed 7 times, instead it is taken from a location that actually is 7 times closer, and I would guess with close to the same speed. My point was not about camera exposures, what I am trying to say is that both cameras will capture identical photons if everything else is equal and thus reveal the same image. Let's say that the spaceship is coming from behind Earth and exactly when it passes, both cameras simultaneously takes the picture. The spaceship going very fast covers a large distance while the shutter is open and thus recieves more photons than it would if it would have been standing still. The camera on the Earth on the other hand instead has it shutter open for an equal longer duration letting the same amount of photons entering, which then also will come from the same distance the spaceship is covering. Both cameras thus captures almost exactly the same amount of nearly identical photons from a matching location during an interval they both individually percieve to be of an indistinguishable shutter time. So why would their images be different?

It seems that both your argument from observation and your humble attitude failed...