Daniel Whiteson
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
So the key is that the universe was opaque to light before that point.
But the universe can be transparent to other stuff.
For example, neutrinos.
Neutrinos can pass right through the earth.
There are neutrinos passing through my fingers right now, like a trillion every second pass through my fingernails.
And can they exceed the speed of light?
They cannot.
They can't.
Okay.
Nothing can exceed the speed of light.
And they have a tiny little bit of mass, so they move just below the speed of light.
Okay.
Yeah.
But they were flying around the early universe, and the universe was transparent to neutrinos just like a second after this Planck moment.
So if we could see neutrinos from the very early universe, we could see 400,000 years earlier than we've ever seen before.
We could see the structure of the universe, the shape of the universe.
What was going on?
Was it foamy?
Was it smooth?
Were there purple dragons?