How could the universe expand faster than the speed of light? That seems impossible!
- asks Paul
Joshua J Romero • July 9, 2007
![[CREDIT: NASA/L.BEWLEY]](https://scienceline.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/timespace.jpg)
[CREDIT: NASA/L.BEWLEY]
In science fiction universes, traveling the galaxy is a snap – just engage the “warp” or “hyperspeed” drive, and off you go, cruising the cosmos at several times the speed of light. But back in reality, we’ve all been taught that the speed of light is a strict traffic law that can’t be broken. This is true, but slightly misleading.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity, first published in 1905, asserted that the speed of light is a constant (300 million meters per second), no matter who measures it. It’s always the same whether you are in motion or at rest. This line of thinking is a lot different than we’re used to experiencing. For example, if you try to measure the speed of an oncoming car from a moving vehicle, you end up getting the combined speed of both cars. This is why cops have to stay parked. Light is different, because no matter what you’re doing it always goes the same speed.
The speed of light affects us more than we realize – it helps us understand the difference between cause and effect. If things could move faster than the light we see them by, we’d be in for weird experiences. If you were a catcher trying to catch a superluminal fastball, you might feel the ball hit your glove even before the pitcher starts his wind-up: The effect before the cause. That’s because the image of object would be traveling at the speed of light, trailing the faster baseball like the slower sound of thunder trails after the image of lightning.
Now that we have a taste for Einstein’s theory, we know that baseballs don’t go faster than the speed of light. But is there anything that can? It turns out that the speed of light is only a limit on objects – like baseballs – as they move through space. The movement of space itself, however, can make the speed of light seem slow.
Right after the Big Bang, the universe had a monstrous growth-spurt called inflation. The whole thing was over in less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, but the universe grew exponentially in that brief blip, repeatedly doubling in size. At the end of inflation, although the universe was still smaller than a car, the outer edge had traveled many times faster than the speed of light. Since then, the universe has continued its expansion, but at a more reasonable, steady pace.
This ultra-fast growth seems to contradict what we’ve just discussed, but it makes sense if you understand the distinction between expansion and motion. When astronomers say that the universe is expanding, they’re talking about the rather abstract concept of space-time. Basically, space-time is the three physical dimensions of our existence-length, breadth and depth-combined with the additional dimension of time; think of it as a wire grid that connects every part of the universe to every other part. When we say an object has motion, we’re referring to its change in position relative to the space-time grid. The speed of light is only a constraint for objects that exist within space-time, not for space-time itself.
To better visualize the theory, astronomers often illustrate the expanding universe as a loaf of raisin bread rising in the oven. The raisins are galaxies and the rising dough represents space-time. As the dough expands, the raisin galaxies find themselves farther apart from each other, even though they are not moving relative to the dough between them.
Now let’s imagine that there’s a beetle in the loaf and it starts crawling toward a faraway raisin (don’t worry- we’re not going to eat it anyway). The beetle represents anything within space, such as baseballs, spaceships or photons. When the beetle burrows through the bread, he is moving relative to the dough, and all the other raisins. The speed of light limits how fast the beetle can travel, but not how quickly the bread can rise. Just because the expansion of space can break the speed limit, it doesn’t mean that we can go faster than Einstein said we could.
So, while the speed of light remains an unbreakable barrier for those of us within the universe, it can’t limit the expansion of space-time itself. The universe keeps right on expanding, but the speed of light limits how much of it we can see, and how fast we can move. It may not be fair, but that’s physics.
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About the Author
Joshua J Romero
Josh comes to science writing in New York City after studying astronomy and physics in Arizona. While he misses never wearing real shoes, Josh relishes the opportunity to read about science, politics, arts and culture on his daily subway rides. A former college-radio DJ, he is often found late at night in a half-empty, downtown bar listening to a noisy, experimental band with no record deal. He is fascinated with the boundaries of science, where it must intersect with politics, art, religion, or human nature.
198 Comments
Einstein, although widely misquoted as doing so, did not assert or hypothesize that the speed of light is a constant. He asserted that it is everywhere the same without respect to the field of reference. This allows for a speed of light that remains uniform throughout the entire universe but not necessarily a constant over time.
There are those of us who are aware that at the beginning the speed of light and the speed of gravity were once equal. Since then the speed of light has decayed greatly and the speed of gravity has not. I refer you to the work of Barry Setterfield; he has a website.
Thomas, great point to bring up- indeed, when I referred to the “constant speed of light,” I meant as measured anywhere in our current universe. Thanks for helping to make the distinction.
Hello,
I have a couple of questions on this topic. Here are the facts:
2 flashlights are moving away from each other starting from a fixed point along a straight line.
The flashlights are pointed at each other.
Each flashlight is traveling at 1/2 the speed of light as measured from the fixed point.
The flashlights are traveling away from each other at the speed of light.
The question: If you turn the flashlights on after one minute, will the light ever reach the other flashlight?
If the light will never reach the other flashlight, and the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate, what happens when the speed of the expanding universe reaches 1/2 the speed of light?
That is the point in the first comment. The speed of light is not relative to the motion of the flashlight. The light emmited when you turn on the flashlight will travel at the speed of light towards the other flashlight and reach it at the third minute.
Since both flashlights are travelling at 1/2 light speed, after 1 minute both flashlights will be exactly one light minute apart. now the flashlights are turned on. the light from flashlight A will take 1 minute to reach the point when flashlight B was first turned on. Let’s call this point C. Meanwhile, flashlight B was still moving for 1 minute and will be 1/2 light minute further away from that point C. the light from flashlight A will take one more light minute to connect with flashlight B who after one minute will be exactly one light minute away from the point C.
This is only two minutes from the time that the flashlights were turned on. But it is 3 minutes from the start of the experiment.
Please correct the math if I am wrong, but I think it’s right.
so is there something like a photon or anything that can beat the speed of light because if there is i would be delighted to know!
The fact that we will always measure the speed of light as being the same, irrespective of our own speed, seems to have been demonstrated experimenatlly. Also, apparently proven is that clocks keep different time according to how they are moving. However – does anyone actually understand how these apparently logical impossibilties can be? Or why particles should change their behaviour if we look at them or that space is curved or how the whole universe can ever have been concentrated at a point? I once asked a physicist and he answered that no-one understands how these things can be – they just are so. It seems that we must ascribe them to magic?
Robert, it is a logical impossibility only because our conception of logic is flawed.
Greg:
If our concept of logic is flawed, then “someone” needs to show where the flaw is. If I´m going at 30mph and another car overtakes at 60, I´ll measure its relative speed at 30mph.. The same applies to a washing machine overtaking me in outerspace or a sound wave on the earth. But not to a photon – I will always measure its relative speed the same, no matter what my speed is. Why???
The Universe is thought by many physicists to have come from nothing – no space, no matter, no energy and no time – you can´t get any more nothigful than that. A quantum fluctuation in the nothing, they say. And what caused this quantum fluctuation? Nothing did – it was random. It´s all pretty unbelievable stuff, which scientists do not understand either. A physicist whom I exchanged emails with said there is a saying in his profession in the context of these impossible questions – keep your head down and calculate.
I don’t think that it is logic that is flawed (here)…
Let’s say two identical spaceships take off from an asteroid at the same time in opposite directions. Both have identical clocks. After accelerating to .9c, Ship A sends a signal. Everyone agrees that this travels the speed of light, and it takes some amount of time. Ship A waits an hour, and sends another signal, but now the two ships are further apart, so it takes longer for this signal to get there. Ship B therefore measures rather more than an hour between the signals and has no choice but to conclude that time is passing slower for ship A.
We know that isn’t true, it just took longer for the signal to get there. As it happens, however, if Ship B sends a signal of its own, it knows that it will travel towards Ship B at c relative to Ship B, which means that it is going at some lesser speed relative to Ship A according to Ship B’s reckoning of time. But Ship A’s time appears to be slower than Ship B’s (according to Ship B), so you have to take that into account, at which point you will realize that the light is still moving at c.
Both ships will be saying that time is passing more slowly on the other, so which is right? Well both… to be able to tell for sure, they’d have to “meet up” again, and to do that, one or both of them would have to accelerate, which changes their frame of reference.
I’m no physicist, but that is my understanding of it.
I don´t think your example is the same as the peculiarity I´m referring to. If I am travelling at 0.25%c and I´m overtaken by someone travelling at 0.50%c and simultaneously a photon overtakes both of us and we each measure its relative speed, we will both measure its relative speed at c – not 0.75c and 0.50c respectively. (Phew!!) I asked a physicist whether, even though we know it is so, he understood how it possibly could be. (Together with moving clocks keeping different times and a whole lot of other “counterintuitive” things). He replied that the various things I cited are so and we have to accept them – but no-one understands them.
Whilst the evidence is convincing that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate (Supernova Type 1a vs redshift plot), I have seen no evidence that the space-time grid is expanding faster than the speed of light, whether in the past nor in the present. Can anyone help here?
Does anybody really know what time it is? -Chicago
was there light was there time ?was there gravity before big bang?if so there is a problem,because of the gravity time connection.therefore it does not matter if it blew up or not.gravity was still there,with the time.can not have nothing,then something.impossible,bad theory.the gravity of the nothing object in space,has already reached out and influenced time and space,whether it blew up or not makes no difference.also it has been said,for a minute time it was going faster than the speed of light,then slowed down,then sped back up etc.well first of all,if it was going faster than the speed of light it would keep doing so.no reason for it to slow down,because there is nothing there right.well for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.a body in motion stays in motion,unless it is acted upon by an outside force.in the universe or universes.nothing can be added to or taken away from.etc.we may be going faster than the speed of light ourselves,do to all the different speeds we are moving through space,plus the main unknown one being the big bang itself.highly unlikely thathe singularity was just sitting there.probably had a lot of angular momentums in it from earlier journeys etc.also it has been said that the universe is expanding with the distant galaxies reaproaching the speed of light.a problem again,you would not be able to see any of the far away galaxies the way we can.because given their age 13 billion plus years plus. not enough time in age of said universe for them to get there.you can see these galaxies both directions from earth.this is a problem because this is way older than theory suggest.add it up.then there is the how long did it take to get there to see where it is now thing ,plus how long to make a galaxy thing.etc.we are not the center of the universe,but if you just used the speed of light from us to see them where they are now,does not add up.also due to the theory of infinite mass with speed increase to light theory,you would not be able to see those far away galaxies they would be squished down to various small sizes due to their close to light speeds.therefore everywhere out there. there should be squished galaxies do to their speed etc. like to know where they are in theory and such.also the missing mass thing, thats easy .the mass is outside our vision,past our telescopes past our instuments,that would explain a few of the holes in the theories .it is not the ether out there causing this it is mass gravity etc.light is influenced by gravity and probably distance,therefore things may not be as thy seem.anytime tou turn on a flashlight or anything in the electomagnectic spectrum,it is going faster than the speed of light due to all the angular momentums the earth is envolved in.
Interesting question and interesting commnets.
Here’s my take:
I start with the premise that time and distance are inseparable.
As a further shrinking of nature’s elements, I propose that distance and time are two sides of the same coin. I explain this notion with a mind experiment. Imagine that two scientists are conducting a test of the speed of light and they synchronize their very accurate watches. As part of the test, one moves to a location that is 186.3 miles away from the other, which is 1/1000th the distance light is thought to travel in a second. When the traveling scientist reached his/her location, the two would in effect be one light-millisecond of space-distance from each other. I contend that it doesn’t matter if the scientist got to the new location via a high-speed rocket, was teleported at the speed of light, or walked. Despite what his/her watch read (which, of course, would be affected by travel speed), once there, (as I will explain forthwith) he/she would be one light millisecond (of space-distance) behind the other and vice versa. Now, imagine that the two scientists are conducting the Aspect experiment and they each can witness one member of a pair of complementary particles. When one changes the spin direction of one member, the other member will appear to change instantly because the other physicist is already one light-millisecond away from the other. In other words, the physicist has already consumed the travel time as time and distance [in the physical world] are equal.
Consider the same experiment using red and green lights. Imagine that each time the spin of one member changed a light would immediately turn to green if it were red and red if it were green. The opposite member of the pair would turn the same way so that every time one turned green the other would turn red. Imagine that the lights are on a high tower and there is a telescope at each end monitoring the light changes. If the spin were changed for one member, as soon as anyone witnessed it, the light would instantly change. The opposite would also be true to the observer; yet there would in fact be a lag.
Imagine that the watches of these observers are synchronized with a huge clock equidistant above them, and they each change the spin direction at exactly five minute intervals starting at noon. At exactly five past noon, one physicist would witness a change in direction, at exactly ten past, the other physicist would witness a change in direction, and neither would detect the one light millisecond delay because noon to each observer would occur one light millisecond earlier. It would seem that light is given a head start equal to its anticipated travel time so that it always seems to get to its end point instantly. We can never measure this difference because, as Einstein understood, our information about an event is limited by the speed of ‘c’. The time/distance limitation is due to the fact that we are not seeing the light directly; we can only witness the source of the light, which is separated by distance, which is directly tied to time.
The opposite effect occurs if we were to measure the speed of light by bouncing a beam and then measuring the delay. A fairly long-range version of this test is done by bouncing a beam off of a mirror on the Moon. In truth, as scientists are certain of the speed of light, this test is conducted to measure the distance between the Earth and Moon rather than measuring the speed of light. Nevertheless it supports my contention about the inseparability of distance and time. Here is a brief description of that test.
In a visit to the Moon about thirty years ago astronauts placed a mirror such that one of its several facets always points toward Earth. Scientists on Earth periodically fire a laser beam at this mirror and then measure the travel time of the pulse, which takes about two and a half seconds for the round trip. They consistently get results that indicate light travel at just slightly less than 300,000 kilometers per second. This seems to confirm the fixed speed of light hypothesis; however, let us consider this experiment carefully.
There are three spatial coordinates which measure locations in space: length, width and depth. Along, with other reasons, because things change and move about, Einstein added time as a fourth dimension. The three location coordinates combined with the time qualifier define the space within our ever-changing four-dimensional universe in a practical sense. With this construct in mind, you can consider the three location coordinates in which we and everything else in the universe move about as a continuum of space-moments, which I call “spoments.” Now let’s look at the important function of speed.
Speed is a calculation of the distance between two points, divided by the time it takes to make the trip. As with all equations, we can employ all its variations; e.g., distance=speed*time, and/or time= distance/speed, in order to derive any of the values as long as we know the other two. Considering these equations, the method of measuring distances between spoments in our four-dimensional universe is directly affected by the speed of travel between them. The result is that we can conceivably have the distance between any two spoments as zero if speed equals distance. In other words, if the time-distance between spoments equals their space-distance, then they effectively occupy the same space! In my model this precisely defines the realm of the metaphysical because in that world everything is virtually connected.
I say much more about this in a book published earlier this yaer, but this is the flavor of linking of time to distance and an important aspect of how space can expand faster than “c”.
Look guys…My plane goes faster than the speed of light. i fly to the Andromeda Galaxy everyday.
If the space between galaxies is expanding at greater than the speed of light, how is it possible that any light reaches us from those galaxies at all?
For example, 2 galaxies are 10 billion light years apart, and the space between is expanding at C. After 5 billion years the light from one has travelled half the original distance, however, due to the expansion the remaining distance to travel is 10 billion light years.
How can light overcome the expansion of space if it is greater than C? Surely galaxies should only be visible while the space between them is expanding at less than C.
@Nardwolf
Light is does not travel relative to the expanding light sources (galaxies).
Question – somewhere I read that we cannot measure motion of a body relative to “Absolute Space”, that motion of a body can only be measured relative to other bodies. Is that because Absolute Space is expanding faster than the speed of light (which would make sense of the fact that bodies confined to speed of light therefore have no no motion relative to Absolute Space) ?
Douchemaster T,
I agree, but light still needs to travel from point a to point b. If space has expanded (faster than light) between point a and b, how can light overcome that expanded distance?
One other point, if space is expanding between galaxies (but oddly not inside them) how is it possible for galaxies to collide? Galaxies move very slowly compared to these expansion velocities.
I am not a physicist, but I think I can explain the constant speed of light very simply. The faster you travel, whether on a planet or in a spaceship, the slower your personal experience of time is (it is relative). When you look out in space, whether up in the sky or out of your spaceship, everything appears to be speeding up due to your personal experience of time (the faster you go, the slower your own time seems) versus the rest of the universe. Therefore the light actually catches you faster because you are experiencing slower time (the two negate each other, creating a constant speed of light).
This is very similar to gravity. The mass of an object increases its attraction (speed), but the greater the mass, the slower its acceleration (the two negate each other and so all objects fall at the same rate). Galileo proved this by dropping two objects of different masses from a great height and showing that they landed at the same time. 350 years later we proved it again on the moon with the famous feather and lead ball experiment.
A car traveling 30mph on a 2 mile long track will take 2 minutes to travel over 1/2 the track. At what speed must the car travel over the 2nd half of the track to average 60mph over the entire 2 miles?
There is one thing which can travel at more than the speed of light. Suppose we put the Queen in a rocket propelled outwards from Earth at 0.9c (good idea if you ask me). After 2 years it crashes into a piece of space debris and she is killed. At that very instant the Prince of Wales becomes King, despite the fact that she is 1.8 light years away. So monarchy travels at infinite speed. Of course it helps that it has no mass (nor any point either, if you ask me).
Even after the universe was quite old, perhaps a few million years or so; there was no gravity until galaxies began forming. Attraction and repulsion? Yes. But gravity is an intrinsic quality of magnetism and several others, of speed.
the speed of light reflects the speed at which the university is expanding at. Nothing in the universe can go faster than the speed the university is expanding at. Time is the reciprocal of the relative speed an object moves relative to the speed the universe is expansion at.
to post 3. – as long as each flash light is traveling slower than the speed of light then the light from each flashlight will reach the other.The point of time you switch on the flash light is irrelevant.
“This is why cops have to stay parked.” No they don’t. They can clock you from a parked position, moving towards you, moving away from you or moving behind you, and especially if you are driving thru Wisconsin.
It is quite obvious that scientists have the definitions of time and space incorrect.
Rather than arguing about how to fit the inaccuracies into “our” theories, let’s break down the fundamental dogma of our belief structure and simply start from scratch.
Here’s an intro:
1. Time is incorrectly defined by movement in a cesium atom.
2. Time is not relative.
3. Space is always moving.
4. There are only constants in a suspended animation.
5. Consider space a medium rather than an empty vacuum.
Now, Begin.
I should add the following because someone is bound to ask:
6. There is no gravity.
7. There is a singularity of absolute silence.
8. There is no anti-matter (or anti-photon).
Enjoy.
In the above example, light will be received (or reach) from flash light send after 1 hour travelling to each other after 3 hours.
I did some calculation and found out that light flashed after 2 hours will reach each other after 8 hours.
I did the calculation graphically.
I just want to know how do we calculate light flashed after successive hours say every one hour. Graphically it would be exhausting.
How can it be done Mathematically?
Suppose I want to know the time taken to reach other, if light is flased after 5 hour travel time?
Reference to post 3, 4, 5 & 25
In the above example, light will be received (or reach) from flash light send after 1 hour travelling to each other after 3 hours.
I did some calculation and found out that light flashed after 2 hours will reach each other after 8 hours.
I did the calculation graphically.
I just want to know how do we calculate light flashed after successive hours say every one hour. Graphically it would be exhausting.
Suppose I want to know the time taken to reach other, if light is flased after 5 hour travel time? How can it be done Mathematically?
I just want to know this infinite expansion of space is taking place in which container or medium.I am not very sure about my language.Suppose there is a balloon with dots/specks on it and we inflate the balloon. The specks are moving away from each other as the balloon expands. What is the limit in the case of the galaxies moving away from each other? That means, is the space in which these galaxies are moving away is infinite? So at the time of the Big Bang, what was there outside the cosmic egg which exploded? Kindly somebody explain.
How could the universe expand faster than the speed of light?
Time is the variable. Can one body of mass travel away from another body of mass at the speed of light? Of course. If a bird flies in one direction at ten kilometers per hour, and another flies in the opposite direction at the same speed, neither are flying at twenty Kilometers per hour but that is the speed of separation.
Multiplied by the vastness of the universe, it is quite possible that our earth and some unknown masses are not only traveling away from each other at the speed of light, but at an even higher speed.
Galilean Relativity explains why two objects moving at .9c in opposite directions from a center point are in fact not moving at 1.8c away from each other. The velocities just do not add that way.
So, how can distant objects be moving away from each at faster than c? The reason is because the space between them is expanding. The objects are not moving through space faster than c.
Imagine two ballplayers on the opposite side of the field. One ballplayer throws a ball to the other. If you somehow expand the playing field faster than the ball is traveling it would appear as if the ballplayers are moving away faster than the ball can travel. This is not the case because the ballplayers never moved, the playing field just got bigger.
hi. There. I. Am. The. Master. Chief. Spartan. 117. From. Halo. We. Have. Exedded. Infinity. Ludicrus. Speed. Thats. Right. We. Were. At. Infint. Ludicrus. Speed. Before your. Universe. Was. Created. Halo. Anti. Buy. Buy. Technolgies. From. Halo. Or. Heaven. Too. Earth. Only. Takes. 20. Minutes
Hi all. I have a quick and to the point question: if we forget about using the term ‘speed of light’ and use actual measurements – is it possible for an object to move faster than 300 million metres per second? If not, what would restrict an object from moving faster than this?
Dear Dr….,
Please to visit in my web site ‘ http://www.timeflow.org ‘ And Please can you test my ‘Time Flow’ Formula? Many Thanks.
Sincerely
Salih Kırcalar
Dear Dr….,
Very small free roaming particles lifetime very short.[free photons, free notron, free proton,free
electron ,vs].And their lifetime is its energy Mc2. Protons are observed to be stable and their theoretical minimum half-life is 1×10’36 years.Grand unified theories generally predict. That proton
decay should take place, although experiments so far have only resulted in a lower limit 10’35 years for proton’s lifetime. I see that. The earth lifetime is its Mc’2 energy. When this is calculated
the lifetime of earth.
Earth Mass= 5.97×10’24 kg. the lifetime 1 kg of mass in space is 2851927903,26 years.
Earth Lifetime is 1.7×10’34 years. I think that, this is a very interesting result.
Best regarts
Salih Kırcalar
How can the universe expand faster then the speed of light? Good question.
The answer lays in the style and design of a born universe. Implied in physics a closed universe is just that – it is closed of everything that may exist around it. Being closed the ’embyro’ as it is called in Quanta Physics sustained itself and grew absorbing other unstable energy pods and over trillions of years a cosmic egg was formed. The cosmic egg exploded – or course it collpased first creating a botton furnace boiling all the premature matter consisting of the egg together. These chain reaction of events built an expanding pressure within the singularity but still as a closed universe. Enought pressure expanded and warp the zero point empty space field existing around it. It exploded. Infinite as the universe seems to us – it expanded furthermore based on the blast. This confined nature of evolving celestial matter instantly cooled due to the expansion of the bubble. When it expldoed – it created a material natured thermo atmosphere of empty space within the closed bubble. A pre-existing universe evolved inside the bubble as matter dragged ‘light’ behind its material nature. read: ” The Supertellic Universe” and “The Celestial Nature of Gravity” soon to be released in book stores.
if the universe expands quicker than the speed of light how can we see the centre???
whats to say this expansion is not allot more recent then you say.
@Kyle Nester:
There is no center. The Universe is expanding equally in all directions. Imagine a balloon. Now draw dots on the balloon to represent galaxies. Now blow up the balloon. All dots look like they are receding from all other dots, yet none can locate the ‘center’ that they are all expanding from, because the expansion is happening in another dimension. Extrapolate this with another dimension and you have our universe.
@Robert. It’s not that your ‘logic’ is flawed, it’s that your intuition is flawed. You think you are making a logical argument, when in fact you are applying logic to a model you _assume_ is correct based on very basic and intuitive assumptions.
Relativistic motion is very logical, it’s just that the conclusions seem to clash with our intuitions. That is only because our intuitions are built to understand the motion of rocks, gazelles, flowing water, and arrows. We were not built with a good gut-sense of how photons move and act. Your thought experiment assumes that, apparently obvious to you and many others, velocities are merely additive.
Einstein showed that if velocities could added like that, as is the case with ‘Newtonian Relativity’, it would imply a privileged reference frame. It would also imply a universal clock of some sort. These in turn would invalidate all of Maxwell’s equations, which were experimentally verified, and would call into question the very notion of science, since the Earth is hurtling around the Sun at various speeds and if measurment was sensitive to this motion, much of physics would unravel.
Einstein took an unusual conjecture that maybe Maxwell’s equations were literally true, and that c was a constant. He followed that implication and not only kept Maxwell’s theories intact, but reconciled many of the philosophical problems with Newtonian relativity, and as a bonus was able to make new scientific predictions which were then experimentally verified.
Many more experiments since then have continued to validate this view.
Here is another, more simplistic, way to make an argument that is equivalent to yours:
Heavy things sink, light things float. That’s just obvious right? So it’s only logical that if I take an object that floats and make it heavier, it will eventually sink. Or if I take a sinking object, it is impossible by making it bigger to make it float. Now, that is simple logic, so where is the flaw?
Obviously, the flaw is that weight is not the determinant of floating, regardless of how it may strike us as being obvious at first blush. Once a model that explained floating as relating to the mass of displaced water, a new form of ‘obviousness’ was introduced, so much so that most people now have this ‘new’ intuition because they are raised in an age where large metal ships are not extraordinary.
Einstein did the equivalent of taking a society who believed that heavy things sink and proved them wrong my making a battleship.
Light does not travel… Light is a chemical reaction process and a bi-product of Universal Respiration…
Many of the problems associated with determining how the universe was created relates to the measurement of light, which is used to measure our distance from other star systems. Current theory regarding the motion of light, supports the speed of light at 186,000 mps. This is highly theoretical! I would like to propose to you that light doesn’t move at all like contemporary science tells us. Light as opposed to particles (photons) moving through space, is a chain reaction associated with the motion of electrons and moves at the speed of frequency, which is almost instantaneous! Light is a chemical reaction which would occur at a slightly slower speed but nevertheless, almost instantaneous. In other words, the light which is used to measure whether a star is moving away from a center, is inaccurate as we are seeing this light in almost “real time”!
To read article in its entirety, visit http://tinyurl.com/29uuqrp
what happens when the universe stops expanding?. The balls roll back. what happens to time then? Speed of light as measured over the last few centuries shows it has decayed to almost a no increase level (setterfield). Stars falling from the heavens? Will a day become a thousand years?
The fact that scientist have discovered that our universe is expanding currently faster than the speed of light (and yes that is currently) proves that matter (in fact all matter) can and is traveling faster than the speed of light. The epandtion of the universe is bast on the movment of thing in it not the edge sence it extends beyond our ability to see. If the Universe is expanding faster than light so is everything in it. The Earth travels around the sun at aproximently 65 million MPH and we do also if we did not we would be left behind by the Earth. So if we are a part of the Universe than we to are going faster than light just not relitive to the light in our area of space but as a hole we are. Let us not forget that once the speed of sound was thought to be the limit and it wasn’t was it. There is no limit.
Everyone seems to think that the universe is still in the expansion phase. I really wonder if it is just the opposite that is causing things to speed up, and that the missing matter is, in fact already gathering into what will be the nixt primordal atom. I also wonder if we just cannot see that because of the great distances. If the majority of matter is already gathered in a ceantral point, then that is attracting the remainder of the matter of our universe, causing these speeds that no one can account for, except by theroizing about dark matter and energy. I wonder if anyone ever thought of this approach.
If the universe is still in expansion, the space between galaxies is increasing, does this expansion also occurs to the space between planets ? Does the space between the sun and the earth is also expanding too ? (is the expansion global and uniform ?)
I think every single theory has got bunch of carrots hanging in front of their noses (evolution). Otherwise we can not progress.
I have a question because I am not an expert neither am I studying for a degree in astrophysics, but because I think and do not believe everything I am told just because I am told by an expert.
There are views on steady state and big bang theories regarding the universe, and indeed on the theory of travel faster than the speed of light.
In regard to the latter, it has always been stated by expert testimony thatit is not possible to travel faster than light.This has apparently only just been proven by the establishment, but when looked at closely has been obvious for decades. Even within this forum statements have been made that prove the possibility and yet none have picked up on the fact. If the speed of light is not constant and if, while the speed is its fastest, you travel a that speed, when the speed of light slows down, you must be travelling fatser than light.
The other thought regarding the big bang / steady state if the big bang is correct why are galaxys travelling in opposite directions? two galaxies are currently having a head on crash which could not happen if they were thrown from a central point. Regardless of the origin of the universe I personally believe that there is a third explanation for the design of our current universe, ie the slingshot effect.
The sad fact is that everything we view in space is conjecture, a persons own interpretation of the known facts. But what if those facts are based on false information? Einstein stated that E=Mc2, but has anyone checked it using current technology or do they accept it as read because he said so?
A few years ago I asked NASA the following: Red shift is used to determine the distance of a star from earth, how do we know wether we are measuring a white star that is a long way away or a red star that is close by. They refused to answer such a basic question. This is a simplistic question but there must be a time when the redshift in both cases is equal.
I have published my own thoughts on the subjects over the last 30 years and it will be interesting to see if the future proves me right, sadly I will not be here to find out… or will I?
One final note time travel into the past can be accomplished but can not be interacted with, you were not there so you can not be there, Time travel into the future is possible but it would prove fatal in almost every instance but not because of the attempt.
You are the scientists, but is anyone interested?
Sorry folks just want to correct a statement (not spelling lol), I stated that there must be a time when the red shift must be equal. Before anyone corrects that what i should have stated was that there must be a time when the wave pattern used to measure red shift must be equal in frequency and amplitude.
i think this guy “nailed it” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqd8XUIyVo4