Why Can't We See The Big Bang?

Since telescopes let us look back in time, shouldn't we be able to see all the way back to the very beginning of time itself? To the moment of the Big Bang?

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Team:
Fraser Cain - @fcain
Jason Harmer - @jasoncharmer
Susie Murph - @susiemmurph
Brian Koberlein - @briankoberlein
Kevin Gill - @kevinmgill

Created by:
Fraser Cain and Jason Harmer

Edited by:
Chad Weber

Music:
Left Spine Down - “X-Ray”

You've probably heard that looking out into space is like looking back in time.

As it takes light 1 second to get from the Moon to us. Whenever we view it, we’re seeing it 1 second in the past.

The Sun is 8 light minutes away, and the light we see from it is from 8 minutes into the past.

A better example might be Andromeda, it’s 2.5 million light years away... and you guessed it, we’re seeing it 2.5 million years in the past.

Since the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago, using this idea, shouldn't we be able look all the way back to the beginning of time, even if we've misplaced the key to our Tardis?

At the very beginning of the Universe, seconds after the Big Bang, everything was mushed together.

Energy and matter were the same thing. Dogs and cats lived together. There was no difference between light and radiation, it was all just one united force.

You couldn't see it, because light didn't actually exist.

There were no such thing as photons.

However, if you’re still insisting there’s no such thing as photons, you might want to check yourself.

After these things started to separate. Photons and particles became actual things. Electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force split off and formed new bands, but could never quite get the momentum of the original lineup.

By the end of the first second, neutrons and protons were around, and they were getting mashed by the intense heat and pressure into the first elements.

But you still couldn't see that because the whole Universe was like the inside of a star. Everything was opaque.

It was Scarlett Johansson hot, and too crazy to form stable atoms with electrons as we see today.

After the Universe was about 380,000 years old, it had cooled down to the point that proper atoms could form. This is the moment when light could finally move, and travel distances across the Universe to you and get caught up in your light buckets.

In fact, this light is known as the cosmic microwave background radiation.

So, how come we don’t see all this freed light in all directions with our eyes?

It’s because the region of space where it exists is so far away, and travelling away from us so quickly.

The light’s wavelengths have been stretched out to the point that light has been turned into microwaves. It’s only with sensitive radio telescopes and space missions that astronomers can even detect it.

Unfortunately, we’ll never be able to see the Big Bang. Even though we’re looking back in time, right to the edge of the observable Universe, it’s just beyond our reach.

If you could look at the Universe at any point in time, what would it be? Tell us in the comments below.

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[vrstovsek]

Mindblown every time thinking about this...

[DragonUltraMaster]

1:14 - was that just an orb floating by?

[recterbert]

"Dogs and cats living together; mass hysteria!" Lol

Another great video, holmes. Beautiful shot.

[JackBBaltzer]

If I could look back at any time in the universe, I would go back to when life first appeared on earth... would love to see what happened. Perhaps confirming abiogenesis, or if not confirming, then to find out where we all came from.

[pizzagolfer]

Formation of Earth's solar system would be cool to see. 

[colinp]

But how do we know what happened the instant after the Big Bang if we can't observe it?

[Christopherianmatt]

If the light from the big bang has stretched and reduced its frequency to the point that it is microwave radiation, could we theoretically increase the frequency to recapture that data, or record it as microwave and create simulations that will reverse the effect of billions of years of travelling through space and thereby form a picture of what the source of the light looked like? A form of translating one form of energy to another while retaining the data?

[kalpeshgaikwad]

Hell sir,
How can we take photographs or visualisation of our milky way galaxy or observable universe?

[jariwala]

I remember that my parents were 20 y old when I was born. At this point while I am writing this, I realized that they themselves were growing up with me. And consciousness is same as well. Consciousness is light What if we are consciousness. It evolved with us and still going on. What if everything is just words we are timeless.

[hamzamahmood]

I would go back one minute before the big bang

[schadenfreudebuddha]

how long until it stretches to the point we have to rename it cosmic radio background radiation?

[PatrickSteil]

I have a question. If we are say 14 billion light years away from a galaxy. Doesn’t that mean our galaxy would have to have travelled for many more that 14 billion years (since our galaxy isn’t going to travel near the speed of light) and if that is the case wouldn’t the light we are seeing from them now be at least > 14 billion years old because we would have been seeing their light for 14 billion+ years? It just doesn’t make sense to me when they say we are looking ‘back’ in time. That seems to only make sense if all galaxies were magically placed where they are at time=0 and there was no Big Bang.

[Jonathan-xeec]

okaaay... that ignites a fantasy in me that someone has deleted our timeline from Big Bang to CMB. We can't see it whatsoever.

[kishore]

This guy is thr low budget vsauce. Loved it keep it up bro.

[jimberence]

..but..according to the recent discoveries, a same particle could be situated at the different location at a same time..

[jariwala]

Consciousness is evolving and there is not past or future because it is created right now.

[mosantw]

So... At one point the cosmic background radiation came down to the wavelength of the visible light, and if we lived at the time, we should see light from every direction and therefore there will be no darkness for us?

[YouTubeWorldwideinternet]

In the end it all comes to velocity .

[HekunanaSoy]

Thanks for the interesting video... it is like we have a time machine right in front of us but to far for us to reach..

[phaceification]

I would love your opinion on this, if you have the time and willingness to share your personal thoughts. I know very little of your field, so please forgive me if my question is riddled with fallacies and ignorance. To start, let me rephrase the position for the big bang concept: our ontological inventory that makes up the universe share in and derive from a common source. It would not be too hasty a jump to claim then that for a given duration of time the distance between said stuff would necessarily be much closer. The information from events at this distance (retrievable in the form of photons) would travel at the speed of light away from this source. As space between objects expands at a rate faster than the speed of light, would there not be some theoretical threshold in which an observer would actually catch up to and thus render retrievable the information of the source? And if not, what is it about the nature of these initial conditions renders that information forever out of our grasp? Does such a question lead to irreconcilable axioms of the nature of a finite source and an infinity expanding universe or is there a common thread between the two that renders both tenable?