As technology progresses we can look further in to the universe's past.?

Question

If the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, and we can see to within a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, then will it be possible in the future to actually see the creation of the Universe? Even with its expansion, will our technology ever allow us to witness the Big Bang? Thank you.

Answer 1

As telescope get better, we get to see farther back into the past.  That much is true.  However, due to the expansion of the universe, the part of it that is visible to us is limited.  At the edges, objects are moving away from us at the speed of light.  And objects farther away are simply not visible.  The edge that we see is currently the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - emitted by the Universe at about 13.7 billion years ago.  There's stuff that was farther away, but we'll never see it.  Anyway, the CMBR is as far as we'll get.  That's light that was emitted not at the moment of the Big Bang, but when the Universe became transparent to light, about 370,000 years after the big bang event.

It's tempting to say that if we use really, really low technology, we'll be able to see the future.

Answer 2

We can see to within a few hundred *thousand* years after the Big Bang, not a few hundred *million*.

At that distance, we see the Cosmic Microwave Background. The universe before the CMB is opaque to light, so seeing past it with light is impossible, regardless of how much technology you have. There isn't any light remaining to gather from there.

The only hope of direct observations beyond the CMB and closer to the Big Bang is to detect primordial neutrinos, for which the universe has been transparent since only a few minutes after the BB. I would not hold your breath for this.

Answer 3

maybe, if we can exceed light speed.