Something has been bothering me the past few years.
This deals with the 'Microwave Background Radiation' or some such like that...the light from the remnants of the big bang. NASA is currently putting together a project that will be sending three seperate telescopes up in the earth's orbital path (ie, either trailing or leading the earth as it makes it's annual journey around the planet). One of these is to examine the background radiation that was left over from the big bang. My question is this:
Stipulated:
- The earth, and all it's inhabitants, have mass.
- Nothing with mass can exceed the speed of light.
- Microwaves, cosmic rays, radio waves, light waves, X-ray radiation, and gamma ray radiation all travel, by definition, at the speed of light.
Given this, how the HELL can we claim to see light that was generated 300,000 years after the big bang? Here we are, 15 BILLION years after that massive explosion. Assuming that we're not seeing the echos or some sort of universe sized mirror reflecting that radiation, how can we see it? In order to do that, the molecules that were created in the big bang that made up the cob of corn that my mother ate that helped form the optic nerve that attaches my left eyeball to the part of my brain that registers whatever said left eyeball sees, all left the site of the big bang at the same time.
How can this be? We're seeing stuff as it was billions of years ago. How did that molecule (and every other one that makes up the entity known as Roger -Dot- Lee) make it this far out before the light (which we've all already agreed can not be beaten in a 10k road race, no matter where it's held)? How can this be?
Of course, I've studied, and I've studied, and I've looked and looked, but I have YET to see any definitive proof that the speed of light is an inviolate speed limit anyway, E=mc2 or not.
Any people wanna take a crack at trying to answer this one for me? I was up until almost 5am this morning surfing AstroPr0n sites while waiting for the station to try to come back up looking for the answer. All I got were more questions.
And a headache. One of those too.
Roger -Dot- Lee, studying why Einstein's biggest blunder may not have been a blunder afterall...