See The Past (Way, Way, Way Back)

[SmootSmack]

The Southern African Large Telescope, or SALT, can see 13 billion years back in time, nearly to the big bang.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042300703.html
http://www.salt.ac.za/

I find all this space stuff fascinating

[BigSKINBauer]

i like this space stuff too. I don't get it. Look at all that stuff. IT makes BSB feel like he is very, very little. I take up no space when compared to the vastness of space.

[BrudLee]

I wish we could crank back the settings on the "wayback machine" and see some other stuff.

Live-action Flintstones, mostly.

[Beemnseven]

The Big Bang Theory:

God said it, and BANG, it happened.

[BigSKINBauer]

what if you look past the point of where the big bang happened. What would it be? Just all black? Like if you travel faster than light will you go back in time?

I say the warpath designs a special task force to figure out all the questions of science. It will be a piece of cake considering the progress we have made on question 3.

[TheMalcolmConnection]

Pieces of cake AND Question 3 in the same sentence. Excellent.

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by BigSKINBauer

what if you look past the point of where the big bang happened. What would it be? Just all black? Like if you travel faster than light will you go back in time?

I say the warpath designs a special task force to figure out all the questions of science. It will be a piece of cake considering the progress we have made on question 3.

you can't see past when the big band happened. no light traveled. right now we're only seeing light from stars so far away that its just reaching us now. its a distance thing only. those stars have been there for 13billion years, but we just couldn't see them yet cause their light had not hit us yet. If nothing existed before the bang, there'd be no light to travel or stars to emit it in the first place.

travelling faster than light doesn't move you back in time, time just moves more slowly for you than it does for the outside world.

before worrying about such things we'd need to become more radiation proof as a species or learn better shielding techniques though. astronauts tend to die younger and have a bad habit of getting cataracts among other things from their brief time in space.

[BigSKINBauer]

Originally Posted by That Guy

you can't see past when the big band happened. no light traveled. right now we're only seeing light from stars so far away that its just reaching us now. its a distance thing only. those stars have been there for 13billion years, but we just couldn't see them yet cause their light had not hit us yet. If nothing existed before the bang, there'd be no light to travel or stars to emit it in the first place.

travelling faster than light doesn't move you back in time, time just moves more slowly for you than it does for the outside world.

before worrying about such things we'd need to become more radiation proof as a species or learn better shielding techniques though. astronauts tend to die younger and have a bad habit of getting cataracts among other things from their brief time in space.

Well did something exist before the big bang. Even if it was just nothing. I mean it would be all black because there is no nothing but is there something. You sure about things just moving more slowly if you go faster than light? I think it is a big FU to physics so there are no laws for that because physics say you can't go faster than light. Aren't there some things in the universe moving faster away from us than the speed of light so we would never be able to see thm as the light is not comming fast enough for it to ever reach us?

Was there a universe before this one? They say the stars are moving away from eachother and never will come back to together like they once thought. Now, will the entire universe be spread way to thin and everything just die out? Then WHAT!?! THEN WHAT?!!? I think we should start preparing now.

like i said this is cake. Question three is what we should focus our attention to.

[BigSKINBauer]

Originally Posted by TheMalcolmConnection

Pieces of cake AND Question 3 in the same sentence. Excellent.

Seriously people need to work on questoin three. Who has the audio to that?? That will break the fundamentals of the warpath and open us to some crazy stuff. I think only a select few should have access to the audio for safe keeping. really someone said they had it.

[SmootSmack]

[QUOTE=That Guy]you can't see past when the big band happened...[QUOTE]

The "big band" eh? Apparently Glen Miller and his orchestra created the world.

**don't go fixing your typo now

[That Guy]

Originally Posted by BigSKINBauer

Well did something exist before the big bang. Even if it was just nothing. I mean it would be all black because there is no nothing but is there something. You sure about things just moving more slowly if you go faster than light? I think it is a big FU to physics so there are no laws for that because physics say you can't go faster than light. Aren't there some things in the universe moving faster away from us than the speed of light so we would never be able to see thm as the light is not comming fast enough for it to ever reach us?

Was there a universe before this one? They say the stars are moving away from eachother and never will come back to together like they once thought. Now, will the entire universe be spread way to thin and everything just die out? Then WHAT!?! THEN WHAT?!!? I think we should start preparing now.

like i said this is cake. Question three is what we should focus our attention to.

i have no idea what it could have been like before then... i know that the guys on mir travelled fast enough to have travelled a full 1/52nd of a second ahead in time (ie, 9 months and 1/52 of a second on earth was only 9 months for the guy on mir). as far as faster than light travel, it might not be possible at all, but a couple theories exit on how it might possibly happen.

If something was moving faster than light, we would see it. point X, 13 billion light years away and moving farther out, would be seen 13 billion years after the fact. point Y (14 billion light years away) would be seen 14 billion years later, even if that was only created 2 seconds after the light at point X. The faster the thing travels the longer and longer between spoting various pulses of light.

as far as expansion, yeah, that's the current theory. Its not something i'm going to have to worry about the ramifications of in my lifetime though, so I'll leave that to the next guy.

[BigSKINBauer]

For those who believe in reincarnation or heaven or whatever else that is unsettling. If there is no universe that what happens to BSB?

[TheMalcolmConnection]

It's actually not that unsettling (for me anyway). Before the Big Bang, there WAS substance to this universe which had to come from somewhere. If matter cannot be created or destroyed, SOMETHING had to create it.

[That Guy]

All that is, was and will be
Universe much too big to see

Time and space never ending
Disturbing thoughts, questions pending
Limitations of human understanding....



All that is, ever
Ever was
Will be ever
Twisting
Turning
Through the never

In the dark, see past our eyes
Pursuit of truth no matter where it lies

Gazing up to the breeze of the heavens
On a quest, meaning, reason...

[Beemnseven]

Originally Posted by Beemnseven

The Big Bang Theory:

God said it, and BANG, it happened.

Wow. Thought for sure somebody would bite with this comment.