The afterglow of an exploding star is said to be 13.1 billion light years from earth. It exploded some 630 million years after the big bang. The article says the light has taken 13.1 billion years to reach earth.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...e-spotted.html
This confuses me somewhat. It seems logical to me that 630 mil years after the big bang the universe would have been much smaller than it is today. So the light from that exploding star would have reached the earth (actually the earth wasn't around then, so by that I mean our point of reference in the young universe) in no more than 630 million years.
I would have thought that every point in the universe would have been much closer at that time and it has taken 13.whatever billion years to expand to the size it is now in a gradual way. So if that is the case then there is no "looking back" in time because the light from the early universe has already passed us by long long ago.
