Expert: Tom Whiting - 7/14/2007

Question
Hi,

The age of our (i.e., the observable) iniverse if fourteen billion years.

But, say there are stars twenty-five billion light-years from us (which we can't observe).

*They will think the big bang was thirty-nine billion years ago.

So what is the meaning of our claim that the big bang was fourteen billion years ago? Or their claim that it was thirty-nine billion years ago. (I.e., there my be stars further "out" than theirs.)

Many thanks,

Steve

Answer
Hi Steve,
Yes, the age of our Universe (date of Big Bang) was about
13.7 billion year ago, + or - 0.3 billion years.
So....there are NO stars (or any thing else, at 25 billion ly distant for that very reason..... and, no "they" or "we" will not say that the Universe began at a new,older date, because first it's impossible, and second, the age of the Universe is not based strictly on the distances to the stars, or their ages..  It is based upon the red shifts of distant galaxies and the red shift of the remnant radiation of the Big Bang itself,
discovered by Arno Pensias and Robert Wilson in 1965
in the microwave portion of the radio spectrum.
(Nobel prize winners for that accidental discovery-Google it).

In fact, you have IT reversed....the age of the Universe puts
an upper limit on stellar and galaxy ages, which the oldest we know of right now are in the old globular star clusters, dating to about 10 billion years old.  And the most distant (and therefore very youngest) galaxies date back to about 12 billion years ago, and are therefore are about 12 billion ly distant in the recent Hubble Deep Sky photographs.

There cannot be stars (actually galaxies) any farther than
13 billion light years because we are "ALL" inside the
Big Bang "bubble"....we are part of it, and our entire known visible Universe...that was created at that instant.  That's
why-- no matter in which direction we look, we are ALWAYS
looking back in time, not ahead.  (So basically, a telescope is
a time machine, but never looking forward in time, always
backward.)

Actually, although 14 billion years may seem like a long time
in human terms, it is beginning to seem very short in astronomical terms.  Given that the total lifespan of our
Universe is estimated to be hundreds of trillions of years
remaining, (little red dwarf stars, the most common star, have lifespans measured in a few trillions of years).....our known
visible Universe just began "a month" ago....the Solar System
formed up 4.6 billion years ago (last week), and humans have only existed for one second on that same astronomical
clock.  This thinking concurs with the fact that while the
Universe began with nearly 100% hydrogen and helium gas,
formed at the time of the Big Bang,
we (our Universe) is now STILL  97% hydrogen and helium,
with only 3% of that gas converted (fused) to all the other
heavier elements (atomic number 3 to 92).  So this implies that we "just began" and have a long, long, long... way to go.
These are the elements that are created in the fusion process of the stars, then some explode, enriching the original H- He mix...and the stuff you and I and the planets are made of......
iron, carbon, copper, uranium, boron, calcium, etc etc.
all 90 of them.  That's correct...we are all made of...stardust...
even most of the Earth itself are simply...supernovae remnant
stuff.

Oh, another indicator of the Universe "starting point" is derived from the fact and observations that the current Universe is expanding (Edwin Hubble 1924), and the farther out you look, the faster the expansion rate. (Ed Hubble 1929).  Now, as Georgi Gamow said in the 1930's, what happens when you run the movie theater picture projector.....in reverse?  Again, all the galaxies and matter come back together at a point, and the projector freezes up and stops at.......you got it...at the 13.7 billion year ago...point in time.  
So, it's all in agreement.
Q. E. D.
Hope all this helps,
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA


FOLLOW UP:
Hi Steve,
Ok, your conclusion hinges on 2 erroneous points that I
will cover.  True, the initial inflation phase of space right after the Big Bang occurred far faster than light.  This is permissible. Remember, the limiting speed, the speed of light, only applies to movement of matter, it's limiting speed is just under light speed, and light itself (or more technically, any electromagnetic radiation) is limited AT light speed in a vacuum.  Anything else....space itself, shadows of moving matter, 'appearances' of matter traveling super-light due to an observer being  angled off the line of sight....these are all permitted in Special Relativity.  So in the case of the initial rapid inflationary phase of the time-space continuum, this is permitted for space, but not for matter and energy.

The other point I'd like to make is that, not only all the matter
and energy was created at the moment of the Big Bang, but
also our present space-time continuum was created at that instant, too.
There was no "normal" space (as we know it today)-time continuum in existence prior to the Big Bang....I like to call it the  "Perfect Void" with no energy, no photons, no neutrino's
speeding thru it, no gravity, no nothing.  Something like that
cannot exist in our Universe today, or any time after the
Big Bang.  (We cannot re-create the Perfect Void....even if
you completely evacuate a container of all matter and energy,
say down to close to absolute zero, you still have radio waves and neutrino's passing thru it- therefore, it's not
"perfect").  Therefore, there is no part of our space-time continuum that is older than 13.7 billion years...it cannot
exist under our current knowledge of astronomy and physics,
because all our normal space was created at that time.

If you have any more questions or discussion of this topic,
I would be glad to discuss it "off line"...I am at
bwhiting@velocity.net  so feel free to write me, as long as we
stick to the current facts and physics, with no "metaphysical"
concepts being involved.
Hope all this helps,
Clear skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA
PS., Oh, and thanks for the nice recommendations.