Slashdot linked up news of the discovery of the oldest galaxy yet found. At 12.88 billion years, it's close enough to the beginning of the universe that it's probably one of the oldest things we can see, since that's right around the time the hydrogen filling the universe became transparent. Before that, if I recall my astronomy classes right (no promises), the universe was like the inside of a ping pong ball. A really large, really hot ping pong ball.