Question

if the universe is 14,000,000,000 years old, does that mean that for every second, we would be able to see more things in space?

Answer 1

not exactly it means that the formation of universe was about 14,000,000,000 it doesnot mean that we could see more things

Answer 2

It should, the only thing is that we would see things that are 14,000,000,000 years old

Answer 3

I think Inopeki is referring to the speed of light. If the universe is 14,000,000,000 years old, then we presumably would not be able to see stars, for example, more than 14 billion light-years away.

Answer 4

Actually, if we are in the middle we would see things that are 7,000,000,000 years old to all sides

Answer 5

Exactly! If light travels constantly, we should be able to see past 14.000.000.000 lightyears

Answer 6

For every second we should be able to see further.

Answer 7

For a little context (preface, ground rules, warning, whatever) This is one of the most confusing subjects in physics to ask about, Ino. If you want to read about it, google horizon of the universe.

I'd like to sum up a bit about the distance we can see, in reference to the "middle" of the universe question you asked. Unfortunately, there is no defined middle to the universe, so what we see now is the (roughly) edge of our universe if we call ourselves the "middle" (and that's just recently because we just collected light from a galaxy that's about 13.1 bill. LY away. For fun, read down to the bottom of this article: http://www.space.com/14022-rare-galaxy-dawn-time-universe-photo.html in the comment threads, they're trying to decide whether the galaxy is actually much FURTHER away from us than that...about 45 bill. LY That this is even possible is your introduction to the horizon question...Imagine you were living in that galaxy, you'd be able to see earth, but you would realize you are looking at light 13.1 bill. years old, so where might that object be now, presently, since it's been moving--and you yourself has been moving--for 13.1 bill. years SINCE that light was first emitted? To answer your question more directly, yes. There is light that is older that has arrived here at Earth, but our instruments have not been able to observe it...AND, there is light energy that HAS been observed, just in a distorted form, the cosmic microwave background, traveling since that time which is 13.4 bill years old, AND it is right here.

But more to the point, we should theoretically be able to see more and more light as we move through time, yes, but there is a limit. Some stuff was not really observable in the earliest universe, so we'll probably never see it (before about 380,000 years old) because photons weren't able to move freely in the universe before then, which is why the earliest collection of light is from 13.4 bill, like I said above (Read a little about that stuff here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation) So, what we will be able to finally "see" is just the stuff that emitted light after that, just getting older along with us.