Telescopes to show universe soon after Big Bang (CNN)

By A. Pawlowski
CNN

(CNN) -- It may not be possible to travel back in time, but seeing stars and galaxies as they looked millions or even billions of years ago is no problem thanks to telescopes, the closest thing we have to time machines.

Now, astronomers are holding their breath to see what they'll observe and discover with a new generation of huge telescopes set to be built around the world.

Peering ever deeper into space and further back in time, the powerful devices will be able to show what the universe was like when it was just a few hundred million years old and emerging from a period of total darkness after the Big Bang.

" looking at the first generation of stars forming in the universe, which is kind of a cool idea: The time when the lights went on in the universe. There was no light before that time," said Daniel Fabricant, associate director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

His institution is one of several research organizations and universities developing the Giant Magellan Telescope, to be built in Las Campanas, Chile, by 2018.
***
more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/08/18/new.generation.telescopes/index.html




No LBN here, but an interesting update for those not actively following astro news.

so, thought I would take this opportunity to show my ignorance..ha...and ask this question here. Before the big bang, what was there? Was there space? whenever I have heard people talk about the big ban..or what I have read, is that all energy..everything was created with this occurance, and of course, it was neither big or was there a bang, but something had to exist ..no matter how small, something had explode out and expand. BUT it had to be something that did this...and it had to be somewhere for it to "bang".

I think when we can wrap our heads around the idea that light and consciousness might have been around forever in forms we can't perceive, then it may be possible to understand...maybe?? Dolores Canon in "The Convoluted Universe", hints that there is much out there beyond our imagination.

I was hoping there was a simple explanation ...one that everyone but me knew and understood. Ha!

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html">What Happened Before the Big Bang?

that was just wonderful!!!

One theory is that, basically, the big bang was a very low probability quantum fluctuation; similar to the particle/antiparticle pairs that randomly pop up and destroy each other on a quantum level.

What I believe you're struggling with is the concept of space for the new universe to expand into, and that's a philosophical one. Is it really space if there is absolutely no matter or energy in it? The heat death scenario of the ultimate fate of the universe basically says that, eventually, even the protons of matter will eventually decay, and the energy they give off will eventually decay to nothingness as well, at which point, perhaps, there could be another big bang (say a few trillion years later, although there can really be no concept of time without matter and energy occupying space).

smaller than a specific measurement (for space: 10 to the -35 meters; for time: 10 to the -43 seconds), it is impossible to say whether time and space existed before the Big Bang. Causality breaks down and terms lose their meaning.

I think the more interesting question is whether the laws of physics existed before the Big Bang. Laws of physics are not quantized, or at least there is no current theory that says they are. Laws of physics simply are. When did these laws appear within the evolution of the universe and why are they the way they are? Perhaps science is not capable of even addressing these questions at this point in its own development.

The usual way of describing the big bang leads to an image of all the matter in the universe being condensed down into an infinitesimally small particle of infinite density which then explodes apart to create the universe as we know it. But what is often left out (mostly because it is so difficult to comprehend) is that space itself is condensed down inside that 'particle' and along with it so was time.

So, you end up with the highly strange concept that talking about what existed before the big bang is impossible as there is no 'before' the big bang because the concepts of before and after exists only within the universe and not outside of it. So, nothing happened before the big bang and nothing existed anywhere either because there was no 'when' or 'where'.

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope: http://www.lsst.org/lsst
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Synoptic_Survey_Telescope
"The primary/tertiary mirror will be built as a monolithic unit.
Construction of the mold began in November 2007 at the University of Arizona's
Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, mirror casting was begun in March 2008,
and the mirror blank was declared "perfect" at the beginning of September 2008."

A youtube {5:22} about the instrument:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtMJ_WwvBb8



Back to the Giant Magellan Telescope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Magellan_Telescope

"The mirrors are being constructed by the Steward Observatory at the
University of Arizona, at a laboratory beneath the university's football stadium.
The casting of the first mirror, in a rotating furnace, was completed on
November 3, 2005, but the time-consuming shaping and polishing will be completed in early 2010."