From: nognog@adelphia.net
"Paul E. Black" wrote in message
news:pan.2005.05.02.17.00.25.117418@acm.org...
> On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 16:11:07 +0000, spacejunkie wrote:
>> Hypothetically speaking, if the universe were (and always was) expanding
>> at the speed of light how big would it be right now given that it is
>> approximately 14 billion years old? Here is what I come up with.
>> ...
>> So the farthest distance that any two objects could possibly be from each
>> other in this hypothetical =
>> 1.64 * 10^23 / 5.87 * 10^12 = 2.79 * 10^10 OR 27.9 billion light years
>
> More simply put, if the edges of the universe (most distant objects)
> were increasing their distance from "the center" at the speed of light
> for 14 billion years, how far apart would they be? Answer: 2 * 14
> billion light years = 28 billion light years.
>
> Your math is fine, but your model is too simple.
>
> First, if the universe is expanding, no physical object is actually
> moving through space: space itself is stretching apart or expanding.
> So there is no particular reason the rate of expansion is limited to
> the speed of light.
>
> More fundamentally what does it mean that the universe is expanding?
> It could mean that new space is coming into existence at "the edges",
> but astronomers don't find any evidence of that. Rather, it appears
> that space itself is stretching. For instance, (ignoring gravity and
> inertial motion) each thing will be 10% farther from each other thing
> in X billion years.
>
> Imagine the surface of a balloon being blown up. Every point is
> getting farther from every other point. But there is no center (or
> edges).
>
> -paul-
> --
> Paul E. Black (p.black@acm.org)
But how many balloons could there be? What is between the balloons? Are the
balloons part of something bigger? Maybe so many balloons constitute another
entity.
How many entities are there?
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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