Science Forums 2

[sman]

I'll try to state my problem with parsimony:

When we look a Barnards star (for example, ~15 light years out) we see it as it was 15 years ago. When we look 1 million ly out we are looking at a scene from 1 million years ago. So I think I understand it when astronomers say that looking very far away is equivalent to looking very far into the past.

I've heard of telescopes that see BILLIONS of light years away. Here's my problem: the universe is only ~15 billion years old. So if we are looking at something 15 billion ly away, we are looking 15b years into the past - at that time when whatever we are looking at should've been RIGHT HERE.

Maybe we just can't see that far, but still, the farther we look the closer we come to the point where all mater was in the same spot. This is the paradox: the FARTHER it is away from us, the CLOSER everything sould be to everything else.

I'm sure I'm missing something here that someone can fill in. I'd appreciate any comment.