Quote:
Originally Posted by batema
Thers was a suggestion that the post I put in the general chat section be moved here so I thought I would move it.
I need some clarification please as I think I am misunderstanding this completely when I thought I had it under some sort of control.I think I was of the understanding that the radiation being received has come/travelled across from 13.7 billion light years and as a result of the universe expanding has undergone a red shift stretch factor that has put this radiaiton into the microwave zone. But I have read that this radiation is the same everywhere and distributed evenly through the universe and I don't get it know. Can anyone simply explain this concept to a simple mind. I find this facinating and would like to clear my confusion. I listened to a 365 days podcast that talked about the background radiation being like a blueprint of the structure of the universe that exists today that is found in the radiation itself.
Mark  |
Mark,
The redshift you mention is a cosmological redshift due to the metric expansion of space-time. When space-time expands there is no "absolute" centre. (Think of the surface of an expanding balloon, the centre can be any point on the surface).
Hence an observer anywhere in the Universe can claim they are at the "centre" as space-time is uniformly expanding in all directions.
Hence the CBR appears to be uniform in all directions to the observer.
Regards
Steven