Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 12/17/2005

Question
If we're right in assuming that the further away we look the further we look into the past, then surely there's a paradox:

Theoretically, we could look back so far that we'd see the beginning of the universe - and yet we're obviously part of the universe, so couldn't possibly exist outside of it.

Where does the normal science we know break down?

Answer
Hi David,
The one truth of all time is we will always be INSIDE of the universe we observe!

No matter how far back in time we see (when observing the far and hence old reaches of the universe), we are always embedded in the universe and NEVER out of it.

In fact those far reaches have continued to evolve as everything in the universe has, and what we are seeing are but ancient images of the universe 'as it was', or in other words, we are looking at the ehoes of a universe long since actually gone and is no more.

Just as when you shout at a mountain cliff in the distance, the echo comes back long after the shout itself has gone.

The universe has evolved every where in the same fashion, but since it is SO vast, each region sees the other region 'as it was', quite a while ago, and in most cases, that is 'many billion years ago'!

But that does not mean we are "out and the observed portion is within the universe, nor viceversa.

What we observe as 'old universe' is just the 'ghost' of a very much current part of the universe, very far away.

This 'beginning' of the universe is available for all to see no matter which region is observed from where! Thanks to what one calls the isotropy of the cosmic background radiation, and the statistical "sameness" of the universe in all directions.

Just like a single whiplash of a lightning bolt is percieved a prolonged roll of thunder as the different parts of the sound wave fronts along the length of the bolt reach you one after the other and with reducing intensity,

So does the light from the universe reach us with a delay as we look at objects farther and farther off.
In a sense it is an illusion, as the place concerned is actually as current in time as 'we' are, but the illusion is a hi fidelity one, ie it represents correct info of the cosmos 'as it was' in another era.

Hope that suffices.
Jayen