PHOTOILLUSTRATION BY LIZ FISHBANE

astronomical computing

Looking Back Cosmologically

Where were galaxies long ago and where are they now? Explore the consequences of an expanding universe.

ach of the Star Wars movies

begins with the simple preamble, Long ago in a galaxy far,
far away. . . . For astronomers
the extreme past and the ultraremote go
hand in hand. Thats because the light we
see from celestial objects does not show
them as they currently are but as they
were some time ago. Due to the finite
speed of light, we see the Sun as it was 8
minutes ago, Pluto as it was 5 hours ago,
Alpha Centauri as it was 4.4 years ago,
and galaxies as they were millions or billions of years ago. This concept of lookback time is a cornerstone of modern
cosmology. Yet it can also be a stumbling
block to someone attempting to understand the latest astronomical findings.

By Thomas A. Weil
In articles about galaxies or quasars at
the far reaches of the universe, distances
are often described by saying that we see
light from an object at some fraction of
the universes current age, say, when the
universe was only 1 billion years old.
That stirs our imaginations. We try to
picture just how that light traveled
through the expanding universe. After
all, if the universe is now 15 billion years
old, light from this object took 14 billion
years to reach us. But these numbers
alone dont tell the whole story and often
give a misleading impression about the
universe we observe. The Big Bang theory maintains that the universe has been
ever expanding. As a result, the distance
between two objects constantly increases.

Lets return to our one-billion-year-old

galaxy whose light has traveled 14 billion
years to reach us. For such a distant object
we naturally wonder: how far away was it
when it emitted the light we see now? It
clearly was less than 14 billion light-years
away from us then because during the latter part of that period the light voyaged
through a greatly expanded universe. Also,
how far away is it now? Some published
articles would summarize it thus: We are
now seeing an object 14 billion light-years
away, because its light has taken 14 billion
years to reach us. Is this correct? If not,
how far away is it?
And then theres the rather esoteric
quantity called redshift, which relates the
apparent drift of an objects spectrum toward longer wavelengths. As explained by
Sten Odenwald and Richard Tresch Fienberg in the February 1993 issue (page 31),
cosmological redshift is different from the

Above: When we peer deep into the sky, we see the universe not as it is, but as it was. The farther we can see, the greater the look-back time,
and the earlier we view the cosmos. Complicating matters more, space itself has been expanding.

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Sky & Telescope September 1997

59

astronomical computing

Cosmological Characteristics of a 15-Billion-Year-Old Universe

Time since Big Bang (billions of years) 0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

6.0

8.0

10.0

12.0

14.0

Light-travel time (billions of years)

14.5

14.0

13.5

13.0

12.0

11.0

10.0

9.0

7.0

5.0

3.0

1.0

Object distance
(billions of light-years)

3.16
30.52

4.40
26.75

5.20
24.11

5.75
22.01

6.39
18.68

6.64
16.04

6.63
13.80

6.43
11.85

5.60
8.51

4.34
5.69

2.78
3.23

0.977
1.02

then
now

Scale of universe now versus then

9.66

6.08

4.64

3.83

2.92

2.41

2.08

1.84

1.52

1.31

1.16

1.047

Redshift seen now

8.66

5.08

3.64

2.83

1.92

1.41

1.08

0.84

0.52

0.31

0.16

0.047

Objects speed away

then
(units of speed of light) now

4.214
1.356

2.932
1.189

2.309
1.072

1.914
0.978

1.420
0.830

1.107
0.713

0.884
0.613

0.714
0.526

0.466
0.378

0.289
0.253

0.154
0.143

0.047
0.045

Hubble parameter then (km/s/Mpc)

1,308

654

436

327

218

164

131

109

81.8

65.4

54.5

46.7

more familiar Doppler shifts of sound and

light. The shifting is due to the expansion
of space itself, rather than by motion as
commonly stated.
Thus you may come across one or
more ways to indicate the distance of an
object: its redshift, its age, its distance
(then or now), or the speed with which it
moves away from us (then or now). How
do all these quantities interrelate, and how
are they associated with other cosmological characteristics, such as the value of the
Hubble parameter (H0) or the age of the
universe? The relationships between these
values can be summarized with some

straightforward equations. By incorporating these equations into a BASIC program, Ive created a handy conversion tool
so you can discover their significance.
A Program Walk-Through
The programs only assumption is that
the scale factor of the universe has grown
at a rate of the 23 power of time since
shortly (about 300,000 years) after the
Big Bang.* Therefore, the scale of the
universe now (tnow) versus then (tthen) is
(tnow/tthen)2/3. (All times are in years since
the Big Bang.) For the situation above
involving 14 billion years of light-travel

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time the universe has grown 6.08

times in scale.
Redshift (z) represents how much the
wavelengths of light have been stretched
by the expansion of space during their
journey. Strictly speaking, an object with
redshift z has had its light stretched by a
factor of z + 1. Thus redshift simply
equals the increase in the scale factor between the two times. Therefore the cos*The 2 3-power law assumes that we live in a
universe of critical density ( = 1) and that the
controversial cosmological constant () is zero
(S&T: January 1996, page 20).

mological redshift we see now in the light

from our billion-year-old galaxy is 5.08.
To determine how far away our object
was then, consider that as the photons
traveled toward us, each light-year of the
journey was smaller at the time of emission, by an amount given by the twothirds-power law. The original distance of
the object is thus the sum, or integral, of
the incremental distances then covered
by the light on each step of its journey to
us, from t then to t now :
Distance then =

20 REM by Thomas A. Weil

30 RM=(3700/2.7)-1
40 INPUT "Will you enter the (A)ge of the universe or the (H)ubble parameter"; AH$
50 IF AH$="H" OR AH$="h" GOTO 90
60 IF AH$<>"A" AND AH$<>"a" GOTO 40
70 INPUT "Enter age of the universe NOW in billions of years"; TN
80 TN=TN*1E+09 : GOTO 110
90 INPUT "Enter Hubble parameter in km/sec/Mpc"; HN
100 TN=(2/3)/(HN/9.81E+11)
110 INPUT "Enter (T)ime THEN or (R)edshift of the light we see NOW"; TR$
120 IF TR$="R" OR TR$="r" GOTO 190
130 IF TR$<>"T" AND TR$<>"t" GOTO 110

tnow

tthen

10 REM LOOKBACK.BAS - Lookback Time

cdt
,
(t/tthen)2/3

where c is the speed of light. (For simplicity, the speed of light is in the units
of light-years per year, making c = 1 and
allowing us to omit it from the programs calculations.) Solving the integral
results in the formula used in line 310 of
the program. And continuing with our
example, our object was only 4.4 billion
light-years away when it emitted the light
we see today!
The objects distance at any other time
t is the distance then times the increase in
scale factor of the universe at t versus tthen.
Line 330 determines tnow by solving
Distance = 3c tthen[(tnow/tthen)1/3 1](t/tthen)2/3.
Since the scale factor of the universe is
6.08 times as large now as it was then,
our sample object is now more than 26
billion light-years away! The diagram on

140 INPUT "Enter age of the universe THEN in billions of years"; TT

150 TT=TT*1E+09 : SC=(TN/TT)^(2/3) : RS=SC-1 : IF RS<RM GOTO 230
160 SM=RM+1 : TM=TN/(SM^1.5)
170 PRINT : PRINT USING "You cant look back to a time earlier than ####### years"; TM
180 PRINT : GOTO 110
190 INPUT "Enter redshift value for the light we see NOW"; RS
200 SC=RS+1 : TT=TN/(SC^1.5) : IF RS<RM GOTO 230
210 PRINT : PRINT USING "Redshift value too large; nothing at redshift beyond #####
can be seen"; RM
220 GOTO 160
230 PRINT : PRINT USING "Age of the universe NOW
250 TV=TN-TT
260 PRINT USING "Light travel time

= ###.#### billion years"; TV/1E+09

270 SC=(TN/TT)^(2/3)
280 PRINT USING "Scale of the universe NOW versus THEN

To find the age and distance of a far-flung

galaxy, the authors BASIC program asks for
only two quantities. From those, it will calculate a variety of characteristics about the object and universe itself.

the next page shows the status of the light

traveling from that source to the Earth
through the expanding universe. At first,
rapid expansion outraced the Earthbound light, but as expansion slowed, the
light finally reached us.
The speed with which the universes

= ####.###"; SC

290 RS=SC-1
300 PRINT USING "Redshift of the light we see NOW

= ####.###"; RS

310 DT=3*TT*((TN/TT)^(1/3)-1)
320 PRINT USING "Distance of object THEN

= ##.### billion light-years"; DT/1E+09

330 DN=DT*SC
340 PRINT USING "Distance of object NOW

= ##.### billion light-years"; DN/1E+09

350 ST=2*((TN/TT)^(1/3)-1)
360 PRINT USING "Speed away from us THEN

Will you enter the (A)ge of the universe or the

(H)ubble parameter? A
Enter age of the universe NOW in billions of years? 15
Enter (T)ime THEN or (R)edshift of the light we see
NOW? T
Enter age of the universe THEN in billions of years? 1
Age of the universe NOW
= 15.0000 billion years
Age of the universe THEN = 1.0000 billion years
Light travel time
= 14.0000 billion years
Scale of the universe NOW versus THEN = 6.082
Redshift of the light we see NOW
= 5.082
Distance of object THEN
= 4.399 billion light-years
Distance of object NOW
= 26.753 billion light-years
Speed away from us THEN
= 2.932 x speed of light
Speed away from us NOW
= 1.189 x speed of light
Hubble parameter THEN
= 654.0 km/sec/megaparsec
Hubble parameter NOW
= 43.6 km/sec/megaparsec

= ###.#### billion years"; TN/1E+09

240 PRINT USING "Age of the universe THEN = ###.#### billion years"; TT/1E+09

= ##.### x speed of light"; ST

370 SN=2*((TN/TT)^(1/3)-1)/(TN/TT)^(1/3)
380 PRINT USING "Speed away from us NOW

= ##.### x speed of light"; SN

390 HT=(2/3)/TT*9.810001*1E+11
400 PRINT USING "Hubble parameter THEN

= #######.# km/sec/megaparsec"; HT

410 HN=(2/3)/TN*9.810001*1E+11
420 PRINT USING "Hubble parameter NOW

= #######.# km/sec/megaparsec"; HN

430 END

expansion carries an object away from us

at any time t is just the rate of change (or
derivative) of distance. Thus using the
distance equation above,
Speed = d (3c tthen[(tnow/tthen)1/3 1](t/tthen)2/3)
dt
= 2c[(tnow/tthen)1/3 1]/(t/tthen)1/3.
So the objects speed away from us then
(calculated in line 350) was 2.9 times the
speed of light! And that object is still moving away from us (line 370) at 19 percent
faster than the speed of light. However,
those are not the objects own speeds,
which special relativity says cannot exceed
the speed of light, but simply the rate at
1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

which the objects distance from us was

and is growing as space expands.
The Hubble parameter (H0) is defined
as speed per unit distance; by dividing the
speed equation by the distance equation,
almost everything cancels out, leaving
H0 = 2/3 1/t.
However, this result is in light-years per
year (velocity) per light-year (distance), so
we need to multiply by 9.811011 to convert H0 into the standard units of kilometers per second per megaparsec, as shown
in lines 390 and 410. The Hubble parameter today, for our assumed 15-billion-yearold universe, is 43.6 km per second per
Sky & Telescope September 1997

61

astronomical computing

28

Distance from Earth

(billions of light-years)

24
20
16

Di

12

sta

eo
nc

fo

c
b je

Distance of li

8
4

om
t fr

th
Ear

ght r
ay fr
om
E

ar th

0
1

f h

b ll

11

13

15

The expansion of the universe lengthens the

time it takes for light from distant objects to
reach Earth. The diagram computed using
output from the authors program shows
that the cosmos grew so fast initially, it caused
light to be outrun by the universe itself.

megaparsec. But when the universe was

only 1 billion years old, it was expanding
much faster, so the Hubble parameter then
was 654 km per second per megaparsec!
Points to Ponder
The results of the BASIC program provide ample fuel for some cosmological
musings. For starters, consider that the
limit of our visible universe must be

more than 15 billion light-years because,

as noted above, we have seen an object
that is now 26 billion light-years away!
The Cosmic Background Explorer satellite surveyed the dilute glow from the
time when the universe was only 300,000
years old. Today the plasma we see appears to be at 2.7 Kelvin. Originally, its
temperature was 3,700 K, but it has
been redshifted that far by the expansion
of the universe. Why 3,700 K? Because
thats the temperature below which protons and electrons combine to form hydrogen atoms. At that point the plasma
was transparent to light for the first time.
Whatever that material may have become
since, it now lies 44 billion light-years
away from us. Hence this is really the
limit of our visible universe.
The BASIC program needs only two
input values. Since the ages of the universe now and H0 are directly related, the
program will accept either. Similarly related are tthen and its redshift. After entry,
the program prints out all the values discussed in this article.
The table on page 60 shows results
from many runs of the program, all for a
universe 15 billion years old (you can

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change that when you execute the program). Each column in the table is a separate example. The examples discussed
in the article are in the second column.
Keep in mind that this program applies only to the so-called Einstein-de Sitter universe, one with a critical density
that balances it precisely between eternal
expansion and eventual collapse.
Astronomers continue to probe deeper
into the universe, finding galaxies and
gas clouds at higher and higher redshifts
(see page 28). Now, when they detect
some enigma at the edge of the cosmos,
you can interpret where such objects are
in the grand cosmic view.
Thomas A. Weil was a radar scientist at
Raytheon Co. until he retired in 1995. Cosmology has been his hobby for many years. He
can be reached at taweil@aol.com.
All BASIC programs featured in Sky & Telescopes
Astronomical Computing
department are available
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