Motion of the Primordial Universe Revealed

neutron_p writes "New results from an instrument located high in the Chilean Andes (the Cosmic Background Imager) are giving researchers a clearer view of what the universe looked like in the first moments following the Big Bang. Cosmologists observe a time in the universe's distant past when atoms were first forming. The findings reveal the first movements between these "seeds" that ultimately led to clusters of early galaxies."

Comments

This has always confused me

[El]

Don't microwaves move in a straigth line? In which case, shouldn't any radiation created by the big bang be at least 13 billion light years away from it's point of origin by now? So, unless they are reflecting off something or the universe wraps around at the edges, why can we still detect them? If they are reflecting off something, then aren't they really just mapping the density of whatever they are reflecting off of? I guess I'm just not clear on what makes this background radiation run around in circles...