Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 64 (9164 total)
1 online now:
Newest Member: ChatGPT
Post Volume: Total: 916,902 Year: 4,159/9,624 Month: 1,030/974 Week: 357/286 Day: 0/13 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   How big is the Universe?
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.3


(1)
Message 3 of 39 (531101)
10-16-2009 6:48 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by tuffers
10-16-2009 4:56 AM


Yet to my simplistic mind this is not possible. If the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago and nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, surely the furthest apart any 2 objects could be (moving in completely opposite directions) is less than 28 billion light years.
It's a bit more complicated than that.
The expansion of the universe is not primarily due to movement, but to the expansion of space itself. This expansion is not limited by the speed of light. Further there is nothing to say that at the big bang the size of the universe was limited.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by tuffers, posted 10-16-2009 4:56 AM tuffers has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by Peepul, posted 10-16-2009 7:04 AM Dr Jack has replied
 Message 18 by Briterican, posted 10-22-2009 2:31 PM Dr Jack has not replied
 Message 29 by CosmicChimp, posted 11-17-2009 3:06 PM Dr Jack has not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.3


(2)
Message 5 of 39 (531111)
10-16-2009 8:12 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Peepul
10-16-2009 7:04 AM


Can you explain what you mean by that Mr Jack? Under current theories, 'our' universe did indeed start out very small indeed.
Not quite. Under our current theories every gets closer and closer together as time goes back approaching a theoretical point where everything is infinitely close together. However, the actual science of the big bang begins something like 10-30 seconds after this point. At that point all the distance we measure now were compressed to a incredible degree: points billions of light years apart now were nanometres apart. But an infinite number of nanometres is still an infinite distance, so it's quite possible for the universe to be infinite at this time.
That's as I understand it anyway. Hopefully, CaveDiver will be along in a bit to explain why I've got everything completely wrong.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Peepul, posted 10-16-2009 7:04 AM Peepul has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by cavediver, posted 10-16-2009 8:49 AM Dr Jack has seen this message but not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024