Does the universe expand faster than the speed of light?

Question

Good debates so far. Keep them comming!

Answer 1

The answer is - yes.

The problem with everyone's answer is a common misconception about special relativity. It is absolutely, positively correct that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. However, what that means is that nothing in the universe can move through the universe faster than the speed of light. Einstein's equations say absolute nothing about the expansion of the universe itself.

Part of the problem is that most people imagine the Big Bang as a giant explosion, with the universe expanding ever after. It's not like that. There is nothing for the universe to "explode" into - it is literally the expansion of everything - time, space, matter, antimatter, anti-time - everything. Einstein's equations give limits of speed and time within creation - they give absolutely no information on the expansion of creation itself.

There was a point between 10^ - 33 and 10^ - 32 seconds where the universe expanded from a trillionth the size of an electron to about the size of a baseball. This is called the inflation period, and set the parameters for the modern universe. Prior to the inflation period, information (such as heat transfer) could travel throughout most of the universe, although precisely how much is probably not known. After the inflation period, information could not travel between the vast majority of the universe, and that part which we now call the "known universe" has been steadily decreasing ever since.

So yes, Einstein’s equations have no bearing on the expansion of the universe. The known universe is shrinking precisely because the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, and the true size of the universe is completely unknown.

Answer 2

Yes, that indeed possible and in fact space expanding much faster than light is the only way for the Big Bang theory to make sense. There is an echo from the Big Bang, red shifted all the way down to the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum that shows the universe was fearsomely hot in it's infancy. However, this radiation background is almost perfectly uniform in every direction. There is no way for the universe to reach a vast size and have time to equalize it's temperature if it expanded slower than light with large variations in temperature throughout at the beginning. But if it expanded slowly at first while still very small, it would have had a chance to reach near perfect uniformity in temperature, then when runaway inflation took hold the universe would remain nearly uniform in temperature. I don't know if it's still expanding faster than light today, but there's no laws of physics I've heard of that prohibit this from happening.

Answer 3

According to the interpretation of the Hubble constant the universe in is a state of accelerated expansion.
This cannot be.
First the universe is a quantum entity,space itself cannot expand and it sure is not being produced at extreme distances.
The farthest visible objects don't exist anymore,so the universe cannot be expanding.
Galaxies are an end stage in the evolution of a universe and the red shift is simply an artifact of galactic evolution.
Light speed cannot be exceeded in any way.

Answer 4

Actually, though there are a lot of theories suggesting both sides, there is actually no way of finding whether the universe is even expanding.
It is true that the planets are drifting away from each other, but do you think that suggests expansion? Even the continents on Earth drifted away at some point of ancient time. But does that mean that Earth expanded.
And for a fact, the continents are still drifting at a lesser magnitude though.

Answer 5

I like this question. Relativity answers this question clearly. As an object moves faster and faster and gets to relativistic speeds meaning close to "c" (symbol for the speed of light) a few things happen to the object. Here are a few and they are fun and not easy to deduce but they are seen in the mathematical constructs of relativity as well as experiments. First an object as it gets closer to c it gets heavier and as c is approached the mass of the object approaches infinity. That is because as something moves faster it needs more energy to move and energy has mass so as it gets colser to c the enrgy needed is infinit so it will also be infinitly heavy. Another effect is length in the direction of motion gets smaller. At the speed of light the object looses all length it will become 0, again this is an impossibility just like infinit mass. Another very strange effect would be time dialation. What that means is that time slows down and at c time stops and if the speed goes over (although that makes no sense because you need more than infinit energy which makes no sense) time will actually become negative which again makes no sense or basically you go back in time. But it is not as you think meaning if your spaceship goes faster than c you will not go back in history but back in you biological time so you will get younger and younger and only you can imagine what you will be beyond a fetus. Another strange effect would be infinit gravity force. Gravity is formed by mass as mass curves the space-time continuum around it. If you have infinit mass since you need infinit energy than the curvature around you would be infinit so the force of gravity that you create is inifnit. As you can see it is impossible to move faster than the speed of light.

PS - a guy answered that if you have two objects moving away from each other fast enough than you can add their speeds to be faster than light. That also is false according to Relativity for the same reasons above. You can have two beams of light shot away from each other and than you measure their relative speed and it will still show the speed of light not more i.e. twice the speed of light.

Answer 6

NNOOOO. Nothing is faster than light, and IF the universe expands faster than light, we wouldn't be able to discover anything beyond our own little solour system!

Answer 7

Not at present, because we do not have evidence that spacetime itself is expanding, only that the available matter is moving apart.

However, in the inflationary period of the universe expansion of spacetime MUST have been superluminal.

Answer 8

Nothing moves faster than light

Answer 9

No. But you might have that mistaken assumption if you fail to take relativistic effects into account.


Doug

Answer 10

No