If telescopes could see further that 15 billion light years away?

Question

so if the universe was 15 billion years old, what would super high-tech telescopes see, if they had the capacity to look further than that in light years?

Answer 1

Very good question. As I'm sure you're already aware, we refer to the part of the universe that we can see as "the observable universe". This is a sphere with a radius of some 13 billion light years (co-moving distance is even greater though). However, cosmological theory (such as Inflation Theory) and also evidence from WMAP suggest that the parts of the universe outside our observable sphere must be far, far larger than the observable universe.

In other words, the actual universe is so vast, we will probably never see the vast majority of it, even with telescopes.

To answer your question: when we look at the large scale structure of the observable universe, we see that it is relatively homogenous and organised into galaxy superclusters. Imagine a vast 3D spider's web and you get a good impression of what the universe looks like at vast scales. There's no reason to think that this structure changes once you get beyond the bounds of our observable sphere. That must mean there are an almost infinite number of galaxies out there, most of which we will never see.

Answer 2

Telescopes 'see' light emitted from the 'objects' in the sky ..

These 'objects' have been expanding away from us for 15 billion years .. if we could 'see' the very early Universe, the FIRST thing we would see would be the early Stars ... prior to that, there were no Stars, just a hot glowing gas cloud .. if we could see through that, we would see 'nothing' (the early Universe expanded faster than light - light from the Universe prior to that expansion phase can never reach us ..)

Answer 3

universe is older then that it would take some really really high tech technology we dont have in order to see the end of the universe which according to our calculations there is no end.