this is what the lambda-CDM cosmological model - which is the current & widely accepted standard model - proposes.

what you fail to understand is that, because of cosmic inflationairy expansion, these objects that emitted that most-early light (usually from quasars) have been pushed away in the meanwhile through the effects that dark energy has on the spatial dimensions itself. which is the reason why we can observe things that are much farther away than just the distance which light can travel on its own.

Climb down, Maiden.  You're missing the point entirely.  We know that the light has been traveling for e.g. 14 B years.  Light has a fixed velocity.  Therefore at the time of emission, the source was 14 Bly away.  What happened to the source "in the meanwhile" is irrelevant by the terms of the question -- it is not "observable".  We can't 'see' a source at 20 Bly: it would take longer than the age of the universe for the light to get to us.

Now, I have heard a theory whereby inflation increases both distance and 'c', but I have to group that one with string theory as nice and maybe even elegant, but essentially unscientific.

Or maybe quantum weirdness has come to cosmology??

Later:  Hmm.  It's been a while since I thought much about this stuff.  Inflation does indeed raise some interesting problems.  If the space through which light travels is itself changing dimension, what is the effect on 'c'?  And does point-of-view matter to the question?  Got a place for me to investigate?  I read good, generally.

Even later:  Well, even a cursory consideration of the Wikipedia article (Lambda-CDM Model) tells me I'm way out of date on my cosmology. 

However, it seems to me that the term "light year" is obsolete itself, since it seems no longer to describe a set distance.  Perhaps answering the question in terms of light years is asking too much of your audience?  How many are aware of the implications of the standard model?  Parsecs would seem to be better.  Or is "parsec" obsolete too, since inflation is non-local?  (Now to try to get my head around "that" assertions.)  Arrgh!

The article clearly says that inflation is non-local, in that the size of galaxies does not change (at least in relation to large scale distances), while the distance between galaxies can increase so fast that they actually fly apart at speeds exceeding 'c'.

Yeah, I'm still trying to get my head around that.  Sounds more like the universe is, or will be, bounded by an event horizon.

BTW, if that last is so, what is the distance to those galaxies? 

Interesting discussion

Mabus already added some intriguing thoughts, I assume steming mostly from the field of String theories, it can get crazy there^^

Let me just add some information.

If we were to look upon Dark Energy (=which may be responsible for the expansion of space) or Dark Matter in a strict scientific sense, then these words are just names that have been given to mathematical formulae - whose presence in a computerized simulation of the formation of the universe simply yields the best results; ie. a universe evolving from a "Big Bang" and matter & objects ultimately forming as we can observe it in the our sky. Without these mathematical constructs, most, if not all, universes are completely cold & dark, or collapse shortly after their formation into itself.

The question of why we then can't observe, or scientifically measure etc, this Dark Energy when it should actually also works directly in front our door, inside our houses etc is a legitimate one, with Mabus explanation "it's too small to observe" one possible explanation. Another is that it may work in another dimension, or may be part of space itself and not due to some particle or carrier of force. In a way like the elusive Gravitation.

And yes, there is (for us!) a universal event horizon in place, and that is actually what the term "observable universe" describes, and that is 91bln lightyears in diameter. The objects we see at that distance are rushing away from us with nearly the speed of light, in all directions. And because the current expansion of space is accelerating, nothing beyond that rim can actually cross into our observable region, because these objects have already relative speeds of greater than c, and they are (as anything else as well) accelerating. And because causality can also only travel maximally at the speed of light, all these parts of the universe are completely causally diconnected from us, nothing that happens there has or can have any effect on us whatsoever.

(and very very far in the future anything else will disconnect from us at some point except the galaxies from our own local group, which are blueshifted in constrast)

Although only if the expansion doesn't slow down (resulting in a BigCrunch or Bounce, if QuantumLoopTheories are found to be correct). As of now the majority says that the universe may expand endlessly resulting in a BigFreeze when expanding slowly.

A fast exponential expansion will lead to a BigRip, and from that idea you can actually really deduce that this expansion is everywhere, because, ultimately, the BigRip will even rip the building blocks of atomic nuclei apart (a neutron or proton consists of 3 quarks which are bound together by Gluons (carriers of the strong force)). When the speed of expansion will become so fast that the tiny tiny tiny space which a Gluon has to travel will expand faster than lightspeed, then the Gluon cannot reach its Quark anymore and the whole thing shatters; like this anything else may be ripped apart)

One of the best Nova programs was the one that presented "the black hole war" between Stephen Hawking and Leonard Susskind.  Hawking was stymied by the objection that any object that actually crosses an event horizon removes information from space-time, violating the (little known) principle of Conservation of Information.  Susskind solved it one way, but Hawking didn't agree.  His reply was a paper that 'solved' the dilemma by postulating that the lost information is actually moved into a parallel universe and thus is not lost.  This is radical stuff indeed! 

I, like others, have long held that P-space, like string theory, is an interesting speculation yet essentially unscientific since neither can be tested.

However, it did occur to me that Dark Matter can be explained by postulating that gravity (an otherwise unique phenomenon) can permeate 'branes.  The DM that causes the observable gravitational effects may be simple matter that just isn't in our brane, but in others nearby. 

Once one is willing to entertain the reality of a multiverse, all sorts of possibilities arise.

I'll try to respond to the other cogent posts above when I've had a little less to drink...

Dennis

So I'm guessing that instead of light shooting in one direction your saying something keeps knocking it back and forth.

Relativity theorists say/claim that the universe is/and always has been infinite in size, that is, you would never be able to be at its border or edge, no matter how young or old it is or were you're located at. However, our own region of space, which we may call the observable universe now, is only a tiny fraction of that. That means that, outside of this observable universe, there exist an infinite amount of places which emit light right at us, at all times, and that qualifies for the source of the CBR as well.

However, most of this light is actually not even able to reach us because the expansion of space prevents it so that's for one the reason why the nights sky can be dark and is not filled with an infinite amount of photons coming from an infinite amount of locations from the whole universe.

Assuming a big bang not that the universe was created, and made to sustain itself. Going off a big bang their would be a limit where is not mass. Their would be an infinite vacume. If their were multiple of these then all that would do is move not eliminate the vacume border. Now we know they found multiple big bang particles. Now what would eliminate these from being exploding black holes.

An infinite universe... This has an interesting implication not many people think about. It means anything that can happen, will happen, has happened and will keep happening over and over and over.

I'll try and illustrate this with an example.

Say we have an infinite universe with only two types of particiles. X and O. For sanity sake, let's say these particiles only appear in groups of 2.

With those rules you have a limited amount of possible configurations.

To be exact: XX, OX, OO.

In this simplified example there's a very limited number of configurations matter can take and you wouldn't have to travel very far to see a reassurance. In our own universe matter can take up an unthinkable amount of configurations but the number is finite.

If you throw in infinity into the mix then no matter how small the odds are, it WILL happen again. And again, and again.

It's kind of a bizarre idea but in an infinite universe I am typing this an infinite amount of times and an infinite amount of you are reading it after I post it.

In an infinite universe a money hitting random keys really DID type all the sonnets of Shakespeare more than once.

The philosophical problem that arises from this is a nasty one: which version of you is truly you?

Some scientists believe that if you keep traveling in the same direction you'll eventually end up on the 'other' side of the universe. Kind of how pacman travels from one side of the game field to the other. The reason for this is because space/time can curve around. So even if you think you're traveling in a straight line you're still following a curve.

It's possible, but like you said, unprovable in the context of the universe. But there's many infinites you deal with on a daily basis. Just count from one to two. There's actually an infinite amount of numbers between those numbers. Infinity is a real thing and to make things even more complicated infinities come in different sizes.

There's an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 2. But, there's also an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 3, a bigger infinity.

The term big bang is actually a misleading one. There was no bang. For a reasons we don't know (yet) space suddenly expanded. Often this is dipicted as an explosion on TV.

There was no explosion, there was no 'bang'. 

The 'bang' did not create more space than we have today it merely stretched it. If space was infinite before the big bang it will still be infinite afterwards. Keep in mind that before the universe expanded all space was compressed in a point with no dimensions of infinite density. At least, that's the theory. The truth is no one knows what the universe was like before the big bang because all our theories break down and spout of gibberish if we try to calculate it.

Big bang particles? I'm not sure what you mean by this. When the universe expanded and cooled down matter and anti-matter formed and annihilated each other. For some inexplicable reason there was more matter than anti-matter which is why we can have this conversation otherwise the universe would have been completely empty. The amount of matter/energy in the universe hasn't changed since the big bang.

Black holes don't explode, they vaporize (Hawking radiation). However, this takes an insane amount of time and in all likelihood there hasn't been enough time for (theorized) primordial black holes* to reach the point where they fizz out of existance.

It's theorized black holes could have formed in the early universe. These black holes are much smaller than stellar ones and would give off a lot of gamma radiation because smaller black holes vaporize faster. To this day we haven't seen a single one though.

Black holes give off heat. This was theorized by Stephen Hawking.

Here's why. Empty space isn't empty. All around us pairs of particles and anti-particles pop into existence only to annihilate each other a fraction of a second later.

This also occurs close to the event horizon of a black hole. Once you cross the event horizon there is no going back and this also applies to particles popping into existence. 

When two particles pop into existence three things can happen.

One. Both particles fall into the black hole and are lost forever.
Two. Neither fall into the black hole and annihilate each other.
Three. One particles falls into the black hole. This can be the particle or anti-particle

In scenario three the left over particle is forced into existence and is given off as heat radiation which means the black hole is losing energy.

NOTE: It is a common misconception that since black holes give off heat 'stuff' is escaping from inside the black hole. This is not the case. The heat black holes give off pops into existence at the very edge of the event horizon not from inside it.

@Maiden. Awsome response, good read. I'll favorite that link for a later read. 

Before they discovered gravity waves (which as AWESOME btw) they've been looking at neutrino's. When a star implodes it's preceded by a cloud of neutrino's because they can travel through the star before it goes kaboom. The same might hold true for the 'big bang'. If that's so and we can find a way to observe them we'll catch a glimpse of the BB before the emergence of light.

Wondered about that myself while I was writing my last post but didn't look it up. Thanks for elaborating. It is kind of worrying though, if a black hole doesn't lose mass it would, effectively, be eternal which means that if the LHC produces a micro-black hole it might be cause for concern some day.

Wouldn't eternal black holes contradict the currently popular cold death of the universe though?

In that sense infinity is a mathematical concept.  There is no real thing or set of things that is demonstrably infinite.

Yes, I've read Rudy Rucker, too.