They're just looked at images on a distant galaxy, and they expert explained that we're looking at what they galaxy was like 11 billion years ago, as it's taken that long for the light to reach us. He then said, that the galaxy is now about 40 billion light years away. What? How can that be possible. Isn't the universe about 14 billion years old, meaning that nothing could be that far away? I think our galaxy travels through space at less the 1% of the speed of light, but I don't know.
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Stargazing Live
- Thread starter Triggaaar
- Start date
13.7 billion years so light the light could only have been traveling for that amount of time.
Tony Towner's Fridge
Well-known member
13.7 million years old give or take a fortnight or two. I saw this and thought they said 14 billion. If they said 40 billion then that is a big gaff!
Great programme though and despite Cocks it is well put together. He has spent three days telling us how much he has drunk and eaten and about his post programme pub visits. He actually has an ego that is bigger than the Crab Nebula. Fud!
Daryl O'FunnyIrishman is very good though and that Space Station Commander who looks like he was in the Village People was excellent and thoroughly enthralling.
Any programme that gets kids into space is fine by me!
TNBA
TTF
Great programme though and despite Cocks it is well put together. He has spent three days telling us how much he has drunk and eaten and about his post programme pub visits. He actually has an ego that is bigger than the Crab Nebula. Fud!
Daryl O'FunnyIrishman is very good though and that Space Station Commander who looks like he was in the Village People was excellent and thoroughly enthralling.
Any programme that gets kids into space is fine by me!
TNBA
TTF
Helen Chamberlains Quim
Member
A light year measures distance not time.
One light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles and I cant be arsed to do the maths but reckon the answer is outhere, somehwere..............
One light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles and I cant be arsed to do the maths but reckon the answer is outhere, somehwere..............
It was 40 billion years, and this is perfectly possible as light years are a measure of distance and not time. In other words, the light from the galaxy would take 40 billion years to get to the Earth if they were to stay the same distance apart as they are now for 40 billion years. It's only taken 11 billion years for the light we're seeing now to get to us as at the beginning of that 11 billion years we were actually very close together, relatively, as it was soon after the big bang. Another way of putting it is 11 billion light years is the average distance between us and that galaxy over the last 11 billion years (though that's a bit simplistic as we'll actually be accelerating away from each other, rather than parting at a constant speed. So the average distance would actually be less than 11 billion light years. Having said that, I'm not taking account of the fact that light travels past you at the speed of light whatever speed you're going at. The physics gets a bit complicated basically.
I've had girlfriends like that.
- Thread starter
- #9
That's not what I was asking.
I know.
But that doesn't make sense. We started at the same place, so how can we have got 40 billion light years away, in only 13 billion years?
o<-- -->O
vegster
Sanity Clause
- May 5, 2008
- 27,892
Probably due to the tangents. Both galaxies ( Plus most of the other ones) are moving away due to vectors and velocity. But, don't sweat the small stuff, be more worried about where in the Universe our velocity is taking us.
Tricky Dicky
New member
Was definitely 40bn as the universe is expanding in all directions.
- Jul 10, 2003
- 25,798
I've had girlfriends like that
- Aug 7, 2003
- 7,795
Bold Seagull
strong and stable with me, or...
Wasn't there a period of hyper expansion where our current physics gets all embroiled in dark energy and dark matter and wierd forces?
Effectively we seem to have a theory that suggests in the first seconds or minutes following the big bang, the universe went from a small point to billions of light years across very quickly.
You have to take you mind out of linear physics i.e. the universe could only expand at the speed of light therefore it's age is related to how far it expanded, because that simply isn't the case.
It's physics like this that highlight how much we don't know, not what we do know.
Effectively we seem to have a theory that suggests in the first seconds or minutes following the big bang, the universe went from a small point to billions of light years across very quickly.
You have to take you mind out of linear physics i.e. the universe could only expand at the speed of light therefore it's age is related to how far it expanded, because that simply isn't the case.
It's physics like this that highlight how much we don't know, not what we do know.
- Thread starter
- #16
But if that's the case, doesn't it mean the theory that the speed of light is as fast as it gets is miles out?
Thanks for the link.
vegster
Sanity Clause
- May 5, 2008
- 27,892
I think they reckon that occurred within a fraction of a second.
Tricky Dicky
New member
I think the physics are pretty well understood down to a small fraction of a second after the Big Bang, but the known physics tends break down any less than that.
Bold Seagull
strong and stable with me, or...
Nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light.
Space without matter can expand at whatever speed it likes. It's one aspect of Einstein's theory of relativity about the fabric of space time. While galaxies cannot travel faster than the speed of light, the space between them can expand faster....or something.
If Stephen Hawking was on NSC, I think he might be able to expand on this a bit more than I can.
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