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Space Science

The Origin of the First Light In the Universe 133

Posted by timothy from the was-just-born-there dept.
StartsWithABang writes Before there were planets, galaxies, or even stars in the Universe, there really was light. We see that light, left over today, in the form of the Cosmic Microwave Background, or the remnant glow from the Big Bang. But these photons outnumber the matter in our Universe by more than a-billion-to-one, and are the most numerous thing around. So where did they first come from? Science has the answer.
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The Origin of the First Light In the Universe More

The Origin of the First Light In the Universe

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  • What if... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    1. Why would the big bang be unique?
    2. Why are there not two big bangs or 2 billion big bangs?
    3. Why is the light seen as background radiation not from these OTHER big bangs?
    4. Why not simply the glow from the universes out that made its way into our space before us?
    5. A trillion universes that existed long enough for the light to reach us, how would they look if not a glow everywhere?
    6. If its from *our* big bang, why is it heading towards us when all 'individually' observable stars are heading away from u

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by frisket ( 149522 )

      Doesn't quantum theory mean that the above can all be true at the same time?

      In any case, all the models are theories anyway. We can prove individual factlets (for some given values that seem to hold true for us here and now), but we have no clue at all about how the facts stand up elsewhere or elsewhen, so we can have no idea if the theories would also hold up there and then.

      It's turtles all the way down...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dbIII ( 701233 )

        Doesn't quantum theory mean that the above can all be true at the same time?

        Not as such on a macro scale.

        It's turtles all the way down...

        "The Science of Discworld" has a good section on the big bang. For those who haven't read it the book is about comparing science with magical thinking by comparing a very fictional world with reality.

    • 4. Why not simply the glow from the universes out that made its way into our space before us?

      Maybe the folks in the universe before us turned out the lights before they left . . . ?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      1) it can. RTFA
      2) it can. RTFA
      3) it cannot. RTFA
      4) Same as #3, different words don't change the claim
      5) Because they would have to enclose us entirely and be visible, therefore not a different universe
      6) The matter moves on an expanding space. Redshifting is what happens when photons are moving away to us slower than the speed of light coming toward us. Clunky wording, but your understanding is limited. Your claims are incorrect, basically, RTFA.

      More (your "What if" needs to be checked, if it isn't that wha

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )

      Why is the light seen as background radiation not from these OTHER big bangs?

      Because the math fits the background temperature. It doesn't fit the other ideas suggested so far such as yours.

      I mean so wrong that crap has been built on crap that now has become a religion, a test of faith

      Don't let your lack of understanding of either religion or science stop you from making such stupid accusations. Is your God so puny that it can be killed by astronomy?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Nah, he was only wounded by astronomy. Some dude with a pencil and paper who signed onto a navy ship as a "naturalist" did the actual deed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )
          The only Gods harmed by Darwin are those puny enough to be ordered around by Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )

      If its from *our* big bang, why is it heading towards us

      Einstein became pretty famous by suggesting that space is curved, which is why it's come back around.

    • Re:What if... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Saturday April 18, 2015 @06:39AM (#49499519) Journal

      What if our model is wrong? I mean so wrong that crap has been built on crap that now has become a religion, a test of faith, do you believe the equations explain the system, or only predict how the system would look through the limits of the detection mechanism.

      The model is pretty good at predicting a bunch of stuff; even if the model is wrong, it has proven to be eminently useful in everyday applied science and engineering. So who cares if it turns out to be crap upon crap? Scientists would, and they'd be ecstatic. Proving that there are major problems with the currently held theory means more work, jobs, grants, awards for scientists, and a chance to go down in history.

      When a scientists measures something that doesn't fit the current models, they will generally suspect their equipment first. You could say it's reverence for established theories, but it is simple care to double check before announcing a ground breaking discovery to the world. You wouldn't call up your friends and family about winning the lottery before double-checking your ticket at least a few times either.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by chill ( 34294 )

      What if...

      Instead of a stupid troll you were actually interested in the answers. Interested enough to either take some classes on the subject, or expend some effort educating yourself.

      We live in an age where the vast majority of the world's information is available for little to no cost or effort, yet you actively choose to remain ignorant.

      Step 1: Understand what science is. http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/whatisscience_01 [berkeley.edu]
      Step 2: Take a class or look it up. http://space.about.com/cs/astronomy101/a/astro1 [about.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      I'm not sure why you were flagged as a troll, because most of those are actually pretty good questions. Ultimately, however, most of those questions cannot reasonably be answered at this time because no experiments have been designed to address them, either because nobody knows how to design experiments that could practially address such questions, or else simply because of our own incomplete understanding of the universe.

      It is, however, a far cry to suggest that simply because we do not yet (or will e

    • Nice rant. Come up with another system that explains things as well as what we have now (which is far from perfect), and you'll be worth taking seriously.

      For example, QM may be garbage (in the sense that absolute time and absolute space are), but your suggestions are far worse. QM fits experiments and observations very well, and we have to go to extremes (14 TeV collisions?) to try to break it so we can come up with something better. You're just making crap up and ignoring reality. Experiments that f

  • From the penultimate paragraph:

    When the last star in the Universe flickers out, those photons—long since shifted into the radio and having diluted to be less than one-per-cubic-kilometer—will still be there in just as great an abundance as they were trillions and quadrillions of years prior.

    and that is all that there will be left --- according to current theories at any rate!

    • and that is all that there will be left --- according to current theories at any rate!

      Well, that and you as an infinite series of Boltzmann Brains in various states of psychosis.

  • Yet there was a time in the distant past before any of those things had formed, shortly before the Big Bang, where the Universe was still filled with light.

    I thought spacetime started with the big bang and we had no insight into what came before ?
    The article says that the fabric of space was expanding and the big bang was an event that got its energy from spots of crumbling spacefabric (bad analogy) ?

    This process, of inflation ending and giving rise to the hot Big Bang, is known as cosmic reheating, and

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why does it have to get energy from something? an initial state of zero is equally arbitrary to all the other initial states. Just because it looks good for the small mind of a handful men? The universe doesn't know math, logic, nor obeys laws. WE model it using math, and logic, who themselves are derived from the experience and have no power themselves. Of course you are free to think otherwise, and in such a case I welcome yet another system of faith.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "I thought spacetime started with the big bang and we had no insight into what came before ?"

      We don't even have the insight to say whether spacetime started with the big bang or not. We don't even know there was a big bang, merely that all the evidence points to a period at which the universe was vastly smaller than an atom and expanding. We can't look further back because we don't have theories that work in those environments.

      "The article says that the fabric of space was expanding and the big bang was an

      • Great comment until you said 'morons'.

        Goarilla is correct in that the article specifically puts the 'hot Big Bang' at around recombination, and says that cosmic inflation sets up the conditions for the big bang.

        And yet, the writer is obviously no moron either. Or if he is, I missed it.

        Can you not log in, AC?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Livius ( 318358 )

      They're confusing two meanings of the Big Bang.

      The theory covers the first few minutes of the universe's existence, until normal, well-understood laws of physics are the only ones in effect. The *light* should come from the particle interactions during all of that time, so not actually a single moment.

      The moment of actual 'bang' would be time zero, or time Planck time, or possibly something else because we don't know how physics would work at that point.

      The ideas are 10 or 15 years old, so of course 'journ

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The *light* should come from the particle interactions during all of that time, so not actually a single moment.

        The theory predicts that the early universe was a plasma dense enough to be opaque to light, so light created during that time would have been absorbed. Once the universe cooled enough to be transparent, that changed. It didn't occur exactly at the same time everywhere, and that accounts for some of the variation in the CMB.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Brilliant! You are exactly right. As there is no solution to the cause of the big bang that can be human-consciously assimilated, no-one will come up with any kind of thought that would explain it.
      The very best is the approximation that the universe as we know it, is that it is a closed system that originated from outside itself.
      We can take 2 things from this:
      1. The Universe - or 'everything' does not include the origin of it. (thus)~
      2. The Universe is not defined correctly.
      3. The Creative Impulse was beyon

    • All these comments and you're the only one to pick up that TFA gets the sequence of big bang events completely backwards. He says:

      "Something needed to happen to set up the initial conditions for the Big Bang, and that “thing” is cosmic inflation ..."

      As if the science books have always said that or something. If he's renaming events, he needs to keep in mind that 'big bang' is already taken by event number one.

      Still a decent article.

  • Before the light there was the sound. The sound permeated and filled the universe. That sound is "aum". It is the cosmic sound of the brahman.

    BTW, don't dare ask. You know the answer. It is aum all the way. aum sweet aum all the way aum.

  • Matter antimatter annihilation is the reason. During the early stages of the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were created in nearly equal amounts. Electrons and positrons, protons and antiprotons, etc. They annihilate on contact and produce two gamma rays. But due to expansion of the universe the photons lose energy as they are stretched in transit and lose the ability to transform back into particles. Today they are very low energy indeed and roughly one thousand times less energetic.

    Thus they ar

    • Wait a minute, I see a HUGE problem with your description. We should still have an equal amount of matter and antimatter today if that were true. But we don't.

      • No, it's the "NEARLY" equal amounts that's the key here. There was a slight surplus of "regular" matter vs. antimatter, & this minuscule surplus is what we have today. Matter & antimatter annihilate each other on contact (or, rather, just turn into so many high-energy photons), so the antimatter presumably went rather quickly, almost immediately after it was formed. There might still be some antimatter floating around, but only in infinitesimal amounts & produced very recently. Scientificall

      • And that remains an unsolved issue in physics. The presumption is that some process in the annihilations resulted in ever so slightly more matter than antimatter.

  • Summary: God went bowling to knock some sense into wayward particle clumps.

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