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Scale of the universe


Digsy

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I watch a documentry once that said it was a theory that just after thebig bang the universe was expanding faster then the speed of light. But that was just a theory. but recently I read somewhere they have now found a atom that moves faster then the speed of light so it goes along way into backing that theory up

 

Cool. I have no issue with there being velocities way beyond lightspeed but these guys need to get their story straight, since it doesn't make much sense at the moment.

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Morpheus: Look up 'comoving distance'.

 

Ok cheers for that. ;)

 

I just read about 'peculiar distances' and such but it doesn't address the fundamental question that I asked, which is how the Universe could be larger than it's own age would allow. Perception of time or distance is one thing but the basic hypothesis that the Universe is 14 billion years old and yet is estimated at 93 billion light years across, makes no sense without changing one or more variables, such as the speed of light or the age of the Universe.

 

The matter of perceived distance is irrelevant to this fundamental question. I'm just interested in how these guys came up with 93 billion light years, as, from a singularity or Big Bang, it's simply not possible in 14 billion years, even at the constant speed of light, regardless of perceived distance, cosmological or real time etc.

 

Throw in the 'fact' that matter can only ever approach the speed of light and it gets really interesting, to me at least. Not only does this mean that the Universe must be far smaller than 28 billion light years across, (if 2x14 is valid), the rate of expansion if it ever reaches the speed of light must stop dead, as no further increase is apparently possible. If no increase in expansion rate is possible, the Universe would continue to expand just shy of the speed of light until maximum entropy had been achieved, i.e. all energy from the Big Bang had been 'used up' and matter itself turns to it's basic elemental sub-atomic constituents. Gravity would then cease to act, as it is clearly a function of mass and therefore of charged particles, like electromagnetism, which would no longer exist at maximum entropy.

 

You would be left with a vast sea of nothingness, except the remnants of matter, except this time, without gravity to collapse them back to a singularity, no further Universes could expand into being, as the Lego bricks have been scattered too far and wide and no-one can be bothered to clear them up at the end of the day. Sorry for the technical jargon! :D

 

It is assumed that at this point, after the expansion of the Universe is completely exhausted, gravity would become the strongest force in the Universe instead of the weakest and it would all begin to collapse. Gravity must in this scenario, be a function of even the most fundamental units of matter. Some have even postulated that time could go backwards, as if the Universe is a mechanism with no room for chaos or choice atall.

 

This would mean that there is no such thing as chance and that everything is a clockwork, pre-determined event, doomed to repeat itself in exactly the same way forever. Clearly this is absurd, though some people live by this assumption, judging by their behaviour, as if nothing really matters.

 

If nothing ultimately does matter, then I suggest that we work towards giving life meaning. This, to me, is the reason that we're here, as either way, meaning or no meaning, God or no God, it's all the same.

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To be honest anything said about the universe and how it became or how it is expanding is all just theory and should be taken with a pitch of salt. We have only just started to understand certain things about are universe but unless we actully manage to recreat the big bang we will never really know and it always remain as a theory and these theory's will always change.

 

I would think at some point the expanding of the universe would have to stop you would think as it would run out of energy. Whether it would remain in a constant state or start to collapse is anyone's guess.

 

The only thing you can say is that "all that has a beginning must have an end" and maybe the universe collapsing is the end of one and begenning of another

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To be honest anything said about the universe and how it became or how it is expanding is all just theory and should be taken with a pitch of salt. We have only just started to understand certain things about are universe but unless we actully manage to recreat the big bang we will never really know and it always remain as a theory and these theory's will always change.

 

I would think at some point the expanding of the universe would have to stop you would think as it would run out of energy. Whether it would remain in a constant state or start to collapse is anyone's guess.

 

The only thing you can say is that "all that has a beginning must have an end" and maybe the universe collapsing is the end of one and begenning of another

 

Indeed, it would indicate a never-ending cycle. An ebb and flow, often likened to the breath of God. :)

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  • 1 month later...
They announced the other day it was an error in the equipment

 

 

Can you imagine how much stick those guys are getting around the office? :)

 

There's a sort-of explaination about the universe size / age paradox on the Universe Wikipedia page:

 

The most precise estimate of the universe's age is 13.72±0.12 billion years old, based on observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation.[31] Independent estimates (based on measurements such as radioactive dating) agree at 13–15 billion years.[32] The universe has not been the same at all times in its history; for example, the relative populations of quasars and galaxies have changed and space itself appears to have expanded. This expansion accounts for how Earth-bound scientists can observe the light from a galaxy 30 billion light years away, even if that light has traveled for only 13 billion years; the very space between them has expanded. This expansion is consistent with the observation that the light from distant galaxies has been redshifted; the photons emitted have been stretched to longer wavelengths and lower frequency during their journey. The rate of this spatial expansion is accelerating, based on studies of Type Ia supernovae and corroborated by other data.

 

So I guess as the distribution of mass around the universe changed as it expanded, the distribution of space-time throughout the universe also changed. The light barrier isn't broken but the space the light traveled through was warped to make it shorter.

 

I also recently watched one of the appallingly named "Through the wormhole with Morgan Freeman" documentaries the other day which put forward the case for parallel universes leaking into our own as an explanation for cold spots in the background radiation map. The hypothesis was that the fact that the odds of only one universe existing with precisely our conditions and phyisical laws were so vanishingly small, and yet it does exist, suggests that in fact the odds of universe creation must be much higher than we think. The programme suggested that many universes with different conditions are being created all the time, all around us.

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