Eli5 How can we see the beginning of the universe

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I get that light takes time to travel and that we can look at far out stars and galaxies and understand that they’re thousands or millions of light years away.

But we can only perceive light that’s been coming towards us. How can we see the beginning of the universe if we were in the universe? It’s not like we moved faster than light and billions of years later we looked back to see the events happen.

Wouldn’t that old light have gotten to our spacial position way sooner than we physically got here?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

We can see the beginning of the universe because the big bang happened everywhere, both were you’re standing as well as “over there”. Therefore, by looking at the light from “over there” which has traveled for as long as the universe has existed we’re seeing the beginning of the universe.

If the history of the universe was recorded on a VHS tape, one tape for here and one tape for “over there”, and stretched out along the universe, we’re watching the start of the tape from “over there” as it passes us by even though our own tape is at the end.

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