Physicist: You’ll often hear that “the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light”. However, this statement is akin to statements like “green is bigger than happy”. It’s not even wrong.
There are two big things to remember about the expansion of the universe. First, the universe doesn’t expand at a particular speed, it expands at a speed per distance. Right now it’s about 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec. That means that galaxies that are about 1 megaparsec (1 parsec = 3 lightyears and change) away are presently getting farther away at the rate of 70 km every second, on average. Galaxies that are 2 megaparsecs away are presently getting father away at the rate of 140 km every second, on average.
Notice the awkward phrasing there: distant galaxies are “getting farther away”, but oddly enough they are not “moving away”.
Initially, the distance between Red and Yellow is 1, and the distance between Red and Green is 2. After doubling the size of the “universe” the distances are 2 and 4, respectively. Yellow receded by 1, but Green receded by 2. Green would seem to be “moving” faster than Yellow, but in fact all of the dots are sitting still while the space they inhabit expands.
The easiest way to think about the expansion of the universe is to think about the expansion of something simpler, like a balloon. If for some reason you have a balloon covered in ants, and you inflate it slowly, then the ants that are nose-to-nose (pardon, “antennae-to-antennae”) with each other will barely notice the expansion. However, the farther two ants are apart, the more the expansion increases the distance between them. If an ant on one side tries to run to one of her sisters on the far side of the balloon, she may find that the distance between the two of them is increasing faster than she can close that distance.
The distance at which this happens (where the rate at which the distance decreases because of the movement of the ant and the rate at which the distance increases due to the expansion of the balloon) is a kind of “ant horizon”. Any pair of ants that are already farther apart than this distance can never meet, and any pair closer than this distance may (if they want). In the picture above, if an ant can run a distance of 2 during the expansion time, then an ant starting at the yellow point could reach the red point, but an ant starting at the green point will always find itself maintaining the same distance from the red point.
The “ant horizon” is a decent enough analog for the edge of the visible universe. The speed at which the ant runs is described with respect to the part of the balloon it’s presently standing on and the speed at which light travels is with respect to the space it travels through (technically with respect to objects that are “sitting still” in space). The oldest photons we see are those that have come from just barely on the near side of the distance at which light can’t close the gap. It’s not that things beyond that distance are moving away faster than light (almost all the galaxies and gas and whatnot are moving slowly with respect to “the balloon”), it’s that the light they emit just isn’t moving fast enough to overcome the expansion. Light beyond that is still moving at light speed, and it may even be trying to move toward us, but the distance is simply expanding too fast.
Here the analogy breaks down and starts making our intuition incorrect. When you inflate a balloon the sides are obviously moving apart. You can use a rule (maybe a tape measure) and a stopwatch and you can say “dudes and dudettes of the physics world, the speed of expansion is ____”. Even worse, when a balloon expands it expands into the space around it, which begs the question “what is the universe expanding into?“. But keep in mind, all that physics really talks about is the relationship between things inside of the universe (on the surface of the balloon). If you draw a picture on the surface of a balloon, then if the balloon is dented somewhere or even turned inside-out, the picture remains the same (all the distances, angles, densities, etc. remain the same).
Point of fact: it may be that the balloon is a completely false metaphor for the universe as a whole, since the best modern measurements indicate that the universe is flat. That is, rather than being a closed sphere (hypersphere) it just goes forever in every direction. This means that there is genuinely no way to describe the expansion of the universe in terms of a speed (there’s no “far side of the balloon” to reference).
Saying that the light has more to transverse as the universe expands so that there is a horizon beyond which light cannot reach us suggests that the expansion creates more void for the light to transverse. That void is something. It seems to imply the expanded universe has more void, more “ether”stuff the light must travel across.
We also have to remind ourselves that we are talking about those parts of the universe where light has been able to reach us. Another idea might be that the ‘void’ may not be a void at all but contains other similar domains but so far from ours that light has not yet, and may never, reach us. Yesteryear they said the Earth was at the center and now we are saying what we see is everything. Imagine what we will be saying in another 500 years or so.
How long does the balloon keep expanding?
“Point of fact: it may be that the balloon is a completely false metaphor for the universe as a whole, since the best modern measurements indicate that the universe is flat. That is, rather than being a closed sphere (hypersphere) it just goes forever in ever direction.”
Or the hypersphere is so large that what we can observe appears flat.
Shouldn’t it be dudes and “dudettes”? “Dudets” looks like it should be pronounced “doo-dayz” – following the same rule as “ballet” or “bidet”.
Fixed! If I could spell or write I wouldn’t be in physics.
Supposing one thinks of a large ball of yeast dough containing raisins. As the dough sits there it begins to expand … all the raisins are stationary but the dough around them is expanding. Now transpose yeast dough to the Universe and the raisins to planets/stars/celestial bodies. This makes the expansion of the Universe much easier to understand than the balloon … which accepts the theory that the Universe has limits and forces us only to consider those ants on the surface of the balloon, not those within it.
Now why should it have limits? Shall we say that nothing moves faster than the speed of light … the Universe is expanding at an increasing speed with the farthest reaches expanding proportionately faster. Red shift and all that stuff. Okay, so far so good. Now theorists can assume when we no longer can see light from the furthest celestial bodies that they aren’t there. The Universe ends.
But how do we KNOW nothing can move faster than light. Suppose the Universe at its furthest reaches eventually accelerates to a speed faster than the speed of light. Then as it expands, the light from the bodies moving faster than light would never reach us. But an expanding Universe may still be there. Even though we’ll never be able to see light from those distant bodies from the point the expansion of the Universe exceeds that 186,000 miles per second. At that point the visible Universe is no longer accessible to us. But it might still be there.
Based on the rate of expansion, should we be able to determine how large the universe “should be”? Also, as the rate of expansion is increasing does that mean our observable limit is actually decreasing because “stuff” is moving away from the horizon faster and faster every second?
Wow this is all so interesting! I have a couple questions, first, if the universe is a hyper sphere, then does that mean that things are moving away from one point in space to inevitably crash together in the opposite point, or is it instead possible that our area of the universe is expanding while another part is contracting? Though I may have missed the point… Everything’s expanding equally, theoretically, right? Second question, this essentially just means that distances are getting “bigger,” but might that also equate to saying that the speed of light is slowing down in certain areas? I’m sure the math can work out weirdly like that; just slow down light by some ammount in certain areas and you get the same effect, just done differently, sort of like the difference between making object A bigger and making object B smaller, there’s nothing different unless there’s an unchanging object C to compare them to.
Thanks for considering these thoughts!!!
🙂
What would happen if I “connect” two bodies that are one megaparsec away with a pole (a pretty long pole!). Would they immediately stop making contact because of space dilation? Does it means that to maintain “contact” the pole needs to increase its length 70 km/s?
If we conclude the universe is expanding because the distances between separate lumps of matter are getting smaller, then couldn’t we equally assume that the distances are staying the same whilst the lumps of matter (and our measuring sticks) are shrinking?
Is there any empirical way to tell which scenario is happening?
What would the implications be for our world view if it was the size of the matter particles and the constant ‘C’ that was shrinking rather than the universe expanding?
There are many “flat” shapes that do not extend forever in every direction, e.g. the flat 3-torus.
If everything is moving away from everything else, that must include the atoms in my body. Am I expanding? Why does that expansion not affect the density of all things? If the expansion is accelerating, will it reach a speed that is fast enough to bring the density of black holes down to a point where they cease to be black? If there is a photon right on the “ant horizon” moving directly perpendicular to the horizon does that mean it is effectively stationary?
@brandon
There’s a post here that tries to talk about that.
At non-cosmic distances gravity is sufficiently strong to overcome the expansion of space. That’s why you don’t notice it. Even clusters of galaxies stick together because of gravity.
Nikki Ty, maybe that is what we are looking at with Dark Matter?
Find your scientific researches and explanation very important and really convince me well.
in a question on the possibility for human contact with extra terrestrial , i noticed non
And human cannot control him self only in the instant where he is now , and the God created the time , the matter and the place and he is only can control the universe and these equation of three and he is the only can be in the 4th dimension .
A question on the sciences in the Bible and Koran of all creations, water , iron human, space, thee invisible black holes, the stars renew,- astro nova , universe permanent expansion, evens creation, pulsars, the water osmo inverse the atom and all , about 1500 explanations , some scientific takes that like handicap of researches other consider like an illumination and can help for the best way of all researches .
this question makes me in live .
can you please help me the right answer
I we;; seriously consider the Expansion of a balloon, seems much ;ike the Economy. But I am trying to go to a planet 1000 light years away and the speed of light is too slow. I would be over 700 years old by the time I reached there. And if the speed of light is equal to the speed of gravity, why did it take 13.5 billion years for the light of the Big Bang to reach Earth and what the hell was gravity doing here when it arrived, it appears it had to travel faster than light. If it made a direct bee-line like light. Why wasn’t it here? The Big Bang is said to be nuclear high and low, gravity, and electro-magnetism. So why is gravity travelling so slow? Gravity equals the speed of light seems very questionable.
I accept the universe is expanding at a greater and greater rate, but i hear that a term called now a “black hole” pulls matter and energy into it and nothing escapes! Could the reverse or counterbalance to an ever expanding universe be the so called black holes that physicist John Wheeler coin the term of. could a black hole producing and controlling technology be beyond warp drive to an ultimate cosmic drive system. Using the new NASA warp drive with a tuning guidance(tuner element 131) and energy reserve systems like on the science fiction Star trek with its dilithium (fictional) for tuning and direction(navigation) now resembling a modified microwave radar sensor ( like impulse drive when ions or light is used), and dark matter and antimatter (real not fictional) for energy storage! I also could see a relation between communicating faster than light throw a subspace corridor that does not violate E=MC^2. I use Science fiction as a creative model to view science from. Kind of like others now are viewing the movie Gravity in this same perspective! The proposed warp ship with warp drive technology is suppose to be have been already been tested!
Imagine everything is light…a void of light. You are that light so really nothing has ever moved. Only the place your conscious awareness of yourself, light, is focused at the time. You don’t move. The universe moves around you.
Great analogy for a layman like me 🙂 Thx
“That is, rather than being a closed sphere (hypersphere) it just goes forever in ever direction. ”
“…it just goes forever in ever direction…”
“…forever in ever direction…”
“…in ever direction…”
“…ever direction…”
“…ever…”
Yes. Lensing effect of expansion is very weird.
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March08/Linder/Linder4.html
Say we are at t=0, the moment of the Big Bang and 2 “fragments” move in opposite directions from each other. A beam of light is continuously being emitted by a flashlight on one fragment and I am monitoring a detector on the other fragment. Fast forward one-billion years. Why is it that I am not seeing the beam as it is “now”, but what it was millions of years before, even though I continuously monitored the continuous beam of the flashlight? Thank you for your help.
Raisins ? Dots ?
If 2 dots were close to each other and now they are further away, THEN THEY HAVE MOVED !!!
Everything is moving… spinning, orbiting…
The Earth spins around its axis, orbits the Sun which is orbiting the galaxy, which is on its own orbit…..
Honestly, I don’t know what the 70km/second comes from.
Whatever happened to 300,000 km/s ?
The way I see it, light travels in every direction at, ahem, 300,000 km/s.
So, if we want to view the edge of the visible universe, that will never happen because we SEE at light speed.
By the time our vision reaches the edge, the edge isn’t there anymore.
I see the void (nothingness) as infinite by definition, so lots of room for expansion.
I don’t think that the visible universe expands faster than light, but i believe that its area expands at an exponential rate :
Imagine a round hot air balloon expanding in every direction at 300,000 km/s.
As it reaches the size of a planet, for instance, every outer part is still moving at 300,000 km/s, so instead of increasing by cubic meters, now it is cubic kilometers.
Of course cubic meters and kilometers are WILD approximations just to illustrate my point.
Then again, maybe light does travel faster at its farthest reaches as it is unimpeded by the void ?
If light travels in a place where other light has traveled before, maybe it is slowed ?
I don’t know if it is a question that CAN or will ever be answered.
How is it we can “see” back to the big bang, to the beginning, when the universe was only a few seconds old? Shouldn’t it have expanded out of range. Let’s see… (14,000,000,000/3) * 70,000 > 326,000,000,000,000 m/s. A lot more than c (300,000,000 m/s).
we can’t see back to the big bang. the earliest photons we have detected are part of the cosmic microwave background which is about 370k years after the big bang. we also can only detect those photons that are within the observable universe which is likely only a tiny fraction of the entire universe.
I encourage anyone to correct me in any errors I have made while “thought experimenting here” 🙂
Suppose the rate at which the Universe expands at the furthest reaches of the Universe has accelerated to the speed of light. Why is it not taken into consideration the idea that anything (planets, stars, celestial bodies, etc.) traveling at the speed of light has a now infinite mass, along with it’s length being reduced to zero, and time within the body standing still? Is it possible that as the rate of expansion of the Universe accelerates, it will someday reach the speed of light relative to the objects surrounding?
If the larger mass/ length reduced to zero idea is in fact taken into account, then does this mean that in the considerably distant future, if the Universe reaches the speed of light, it will then have a length reduced to zero and an infinite mass?
Again, hypothetically, then what happens next?
@RichF
So if an astronaut could somehow exit the orbits around the sun, and leave behind any other gravitational pull, then would he suddenly start expanding? If so, would he notice it? Or is the expansion (distance between atoms) relative, meaning he would recognize no change?
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Very informative.fascinating
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This is an amazing article as always.
To understand exactly why the universe is expanding, take a look at a recent research paper that tries to explain the reason behind the accelerating expansion of the universe. The paper can be found
The answer is so simple ! Imagine all of the matter that exists within our universe ! Now imagine all that matter being ejected simultaneously ! Can any of us imagine the energy it would take to jettison all that matter. The “Big Bang” theory giving rise to such a powerful enough explosion to eject all that matter. That is why the speed of that escaping
matter travels faster than the “normal” speed of light !
Okay, this may be a stupid question from a non-scientist. If the universe is not only expanding but at an accelerating rate, does that mean that the moving objects are gaining relative mass? And if so, is the universe gaining relative mass, and could it some day have enough relative mass to counteract the expansion, slow it all down and allow contraction to begin?
I am guessing, based on earlier comments, that this is not the case because the objects are not, themselves, accelerating away, they are just in expanding space, so there is not an increase in relative mass. But I wanted to hear it from people who know what they are talking about. =)
as calculations indicate ,the universe is 13.8 billion years old.if everything started as a big bang and the expansion happened at less than light speed then the universe should be less than 13.8 billion light years across.the edge of the observable universe is about 46 billion light years away ,so clearly the universe expansion has accelerated to greater than light speed-as the universe goes faster than 300 000 000 m/s time would stand still then begin to run in reverse-hence planets firing out to the far reaches of the universe would regress to the time of the big bang and eventually fizzle out of existence-the ‘left-overs’ from this process are black matter,which then diffuses back into the observable universe to fill the gaps.
Time cannot go in reverse, boys n girls !
Time is the MEASUREMENT of the MOVEMENT of objects through space.
It is THAT simple !!!
Like a centimetre, but beautifully more complex.
The estimates of the age of our universe are WILD APPROXIMATIONS which is admitted by many astronomers – who say 13.8 billion… give or take a coupla billion !!!
I strongly suspect that the universe / multiverse is older than we think.
A lot of the difficulty physicists have explaining how the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate could be because the universe actually is not doing this. When Edward Hubble first identified that the universe was expanding, it’s because he noted that all stellar formations are travelling away from us, and that the further away these formations were, the faster they appear to be moving from us. He said he was “horrified” at what he saw because it gave the appearance that Earth was at the center of the universe, and he quickly began making theories to explain why it only “appeared” that the Earth was at the center. This is because of the Copernican Principle, which surmises that Earth is an insignificant planet, in an insignificant place in our galaxy, which is one of billions and billions of galaxies randomly distributed throughout the universe. There is only one in a billion billion chance that our Galaxy would be even close to the center of the Universe (if in fact our universe does have a center). Physicists tend to make a fundamental assumption that we cannot be at the center, and therefore they are forced to invent amazing theories to explain away why our observations “appear” to place Earth near the universe’s center. They hypothesize, then, that to any planet from anywhere in the universe it would appear as if the rest of the universe were expanding away from it. They theorize that some undetectable force called “dark energy” exists that is so powerful that it is causing the entire universe to fly apart, at a faster and faster rate, despite Newtonian Laws that dictate gravity should be slowing the expansion rate down. And because they are convinced, without evidence, that we simply must be in a random place in the universe, they are also forced to presuppose that all galaxies should be moving similarly, so as to not make any galaxy “special” – especially ours.
Consider their balloon analogy. A drawing on the outer edge will get larger as the balloon expands. And the more it inflates, that faster the drawing on the outside grows. This is how they explain the expanding universe. But we should note that at the center of an expanding balloon, everything stays the same, while everything between the center and the outer rim of the balloon gets larger at a rate proportional to how far from the center we go. Someone on this blog asked why our molecules don’t get further apart, as the universe expands. Good question. Maybe the answer is because we’re somewhere in the middle of that expanding balloon, where nothing is expanding.
Consider an explosion. Some of the debris lands close to the center of the blast, and other debris lands further and further away – with pretty much of an equal distribution. Note that necessarily, the stuff thrown furtherest travels at a much greater velocity than the debris that lands closest to the bomb. Could it be that, perhaps, Earth is at ground zero of the Big Bang??? This would account for faster moving galaxies at the edge of our universe, while we see no evidence of expansion here on Earth, or in our nearby galaxies. If Earth was ground zero for the Big Bang, of course the galaxies at the edge of our universe would be travelling faster than those closer to us – that’s the whole reason why they are further out. This scenario completely eliminates the need for “dark energy”, and many other far-fetched theories you may hear of, because all our current observations fit perfectly into this hypothesis.
Other empirical evidence for Earth being at the center of the universe include:
1. Uniform Galaxies. Galaxies are spread out uniformly around us throughout the universe. There appears to be about the same number of galaxies in all directions.
2. Quantized Red Shift. Galaxies are bunched up into what is called Quantized Red Shift. More specifically the galaxies are bunched together in concentric circles around the Earth. According to Hubble’s Law, the distance interval between each concentric ring is about 3 million light years. The mathematics are such that if you move Earth away from its current position by just 2 million light years, the red shift denoting these rings would disappear into a random pattern. (google Qunatized Red Shift for more details on this phenomena)
3. Cosmic background noise is detected uniformly from all directions. If the Big Bang originated from a distant location, noise should be louder from that direction.
Too many physicists simply refuse to consider Earth or the Milky Way at the center of the universe, despite the empirical proof, because they fear it might indicate “Intelligent Design” or something like that; and its amazing to what lengths they will go to defend their bias.
Great post, Dennis !
So true how, like a balloon, the universe is becoming larger at an exponential rate.
It is now bigger than it ever has been (as far as we can tell) and if it has always been travelling at 300, 000 km/s then I think it will seem to be expanding faster perhaps because every single part of this perimeter of this (now vast) expanse is still rushing away at 300 000 km/s, therefore enlarging the universe by greater multiples all the time. Common sense, no ?
Doesn’t matter how you define it. If inflation and accelerating expansion is correct then this universe is ‘expanding’ in every ‘point like’ patch, inside galaxies as well as outside it. What defines the opposite is gravity, acting as buoys counteracting it, keeping matter together.
And it should tell you something about the universe, that and that all measurements are defined locally. Only when we inform each other about locally equivalent outcomes do we get to the idea of ‘repeatable experiments’. We love ‘forces’, but ‘forces’ comes from a bulk universe, a ‘container’. It’s what I think of the Newtonian solution to ‘life, the universe and all’ .It doesn’t fit anymore.
Just an observation regarding the “balloon” and “rising dough” analogies: The reason why ants or coins (or what have you) on the surface of a balloon, and why the raisins in the dough is moving, is because they are physically attached to the respective medium. This means, of course, that the object are actually moving (picking up kinetic energy imparted my the moving medium).
So in the galaxies in space case, what makes galaxies “attached” to the expanding volume of space, thus “dragging” the galaxies along? Since galaxies are fairly massive objects (as well as being gravitationally bound to neighboring galaxies), I would think that a fairly strong force would be needed, in order to make them move … And move they surely do: if at time T the distance between two objects is D m, and if at time T+1 s that distance has increased to D+10 m, then the the distance between the objects have increased, at the rate 10 m/s. Something has moved — One or the other or both of the objects. To say that “the objects have not moved, it is the amount of space between them that has increased” simply makes neither physical nor logical sense.
If this is a naive perception of reality, please educate me! What is the physical process involved with “increasing space”? And how can this process cause displacement of objects without physically moving them?
@ Dennis: Quantized Red Shift? Really? I mean, as somebody who could bore anyone to death in the late 90´s with endless talks about QRS, I am always kind of fascinated when I come across these 3 magical words – but I also know when it´s time to admit defeat and let the patient rest in peace…
From what I understand, the balloon is not a false metaphor for the universe because that at the moment of the Big bang, the explosion started from a volume (sphere) that had a diameter of 10^-35 meter. So we really have a balloon.
The fact that the universe is flat, is in regard to the topologie “inside” the balloon. So instead of being bound to live on the curve of a ballon because we couldn’t cross through the curvature of space, we now live “inside” the balloon where there’s no curvature (we, of course, are stationed inside a gravitational deformation of space-time; but that deformation “lives” in à flat universe inside the balloon).
As fort he question “what is the universe expanding into?“ Expansion is the production of space-time; so it expands in…”nothing”. The word “universe” means “everything there is”.
There is really a part of the univers we will never be able to see. It’s the universe that expanded behind the photons “en route” toward the Planck satellite to produce the picture we have. Even if we keep on taking pictures, the universe behind the arriving photons will always be expanding during that 13,7 billions years of travel of those photons.
At least that’s the way I understand those things.
Excuse me for the orthograph; I’m more familiar with french but things will get better (I hope).
I can’t understand why everyone is so hung up on this speed of light thing
clocks do not change time becouse someone desided to travel at a unknown speed becouse clocks don’t need light to keep time
Alan Christ
Maybe because clocks don’t make time. They are tools to mesure something else wich is called “Time”.
Per the theory of relativity. ! No object can move through space faster than the speed of light. Though the theory of relativity doesnt prevent space itself moving faster than the speed of light
Personally I find it is hard to believe that matter in the universe are separating at speed larger than light. If SR is true, then they must be in different universe as they cannot reach each other. In both SR and GR, space can be bent and compressed. But they are all measured by the speed and path of light. Also speed of light limit always holds. Light is the key reference. This universe expanding faster than light talking has no reference and no lab evidence. At most it is a theoretical guess.
George the human mind, obviously isnt built for comprehending everything…though as a point of evidence..within a trillionth of trillionth of a second space exponentially double its size many times over even though space was still quite small..the outer edge of space traveled many times faster than the speed of light….