Today’s telescopes allow astronomers to look 13.75 billion years into the past. Is considered, that this is exactly the age of our universe. But what is beyond our observation?
According to the Big Bang theory, our universe was born about 13.75 billion years ago and has since been able to expand from an incredibly dense “point” to its present size. The universe is believed to have expanded at the speed of light. Guided by this fact and the provisions of the theory of relativity, scientists have come to the accepted today value of the age of the Universe.
It is known that our space is constantly expanding and its farthest edge corresponds to the time of the beginning of the Big Bang. The most distant area that scientists can see today is the surface of the last scattering. It is from there that the photons of the relict radiation, which arose almost immediately after the Big Bang, come. The surface of the last scattering reflects the moment when the Universe became transparent to radiation.
Behind this area is located what is not yet subject to study by our devices. We cannot see the area that is located behind the surface of the last scattering due to the fact that it is opaque to radiation. But it is light that allows us to see distant objects and judge their properties.
Although it is impossible to see what is happening behind the surface of the last scattering, astronomers can judge the space behind it. To do this, they observe what effect it has on existing astrophysical objects. Moreover, according to the modern Lambda-CDM theory, galaxies move away from each other with acceleration. And the further the galaxy is, the faster it moves away from us.
This means that at some point the speed of removal of galaxies will exceed the speed of light and we will stop seeing them. These objects will go beyond the horizon, but will not disappear. This fact means that, perhaps, outside the observable Universe there is still a huge space hidden from us by the limit of the speed of light.
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