Is the Universe expanding at the speed of light in all directions?

Question

I personally think light has been moving from day one and today we think it's the universe expanding at the speed of light. It really is light just going and showing us what the universe is because we see things when light falls on them. Thinking the universe is expanding is like what people thought in the past that the earth was not moving and the sun was moving. Well, you will prove me right in future that light just reveals what is already there so the universe isn't expanding at all.

Answer 1

The Universe cant expand at the speed of light as nothing except light can travel that fast,,,,it is however expanding at a phenomenal speed,,,

Answer 2

Hmm-m. At least you are thinking. No. The Universe is not expanding at the speed of light. But it is expanding very fast. And, your conclusion that the universe is not expanding at all if far from correct. Scientists and astronomers have made measurements of the distances to various stars and galaxies over the past years and found them to be increasing each year. So your conclusion is incorrect.

Things which give off light have been giving off light for a long time. And, the light that they are giving of now or gave off in the past both travel long distances to get to us. It is the angle of measurement taken from two widely differing places on Earth that determines the actual distance calculation's answer. Angles of measurement taken from say Sydney, Australia and Washington, DC, form two angles of a triangle. It is possible to use math to find the third angle and the total height of the triangle which = distance to the object, the base of the triangle being a line through the Earth from Sydney to Washington.

It impresses me that you are giving this some thought. I am fairly disappointed that you took the easy way out when you reached a point of frustration with the obvious answer, however. Keep studying and keep learning. The things in the sky above us are truly magnificent and are worthy of more of your time if you are willing to devote the time and energy to learn.

Answer 3

For thousands of years, astronomers wrestled with basic questions about the size and age of the universe. Does the universe go on forever, or does it have an edge somewhere? Has it always existed, or did it come to being some time in the past? In 1929, Edwin Hubble, an astronomer at Caltech, made a critical discovery that soon led to scientific answers for these questions: he discovered that the universe is expanding.

The ancient Greeks recognized that it was difficult to imagine what an infinite universe might look like. But they also wondered that if the universe were finite, and you stuck out your hand at the edge, where would your hand go? The Greeks' two problems with the universe represented a paradox - the universe had to be either finite or infinite, and both alternatives presented problems.

After the rise of modern astronomy, another paradox began to puzzle astronomers. In the early 1800s, German astronomer Heinrich Olbers argued that the universe must be finite. If the Universe were infinite and contained stars throughout, Olbers said, then if you looked in any particular direction, your line-of-sight would eventually fall on the surface of a star. Although the apparent size of a star in the sky becomes smaller as the distance to the star increases, the brightness of this smaller surface remains a constant. Therefore, if the Universe were infinite, the whole surface of the night sky should be as bright as a star. Obviously, there are dark areas in the sky, so the universe must be finite.

But, when Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity, he realized that gravity is always attractive. Every object in the universe attracts every other object. If the universe truly were finite, the attractive forces of all the objects in the universe should have caused the entire universe to collapse on itself. This clearly had not happened, and so astronomers were presented with a paradox.

Answer 4

no, because theoretically, no light was actually produced during the first moments of the big-bang...in fact theoretically, there was no light until a few hundred million years after the initial rapid expansion event took place, when the hydrogen and trace amounts of helium started to coalesce to form the first stars.

Hence no, the universe is not expanding at the speed of light.

The parameter that is used to describe how fast the Universe is expanding is the Hubble constant (which tells us how fast the objects appear to be moving away from us as a function of distance).

Astronomers do not know for sure the value of the Hubble constant. In fact there are many debates going on about that, since it is a very important factor in understanding the history of the Universe. There are many estimates done with many different techniques, all of which have sizeable uncertainties associated with them. Generally, we assume the value to be between 50 and 100 km/s/Mpc (which means that for each Megaparsec (Mpc), galaxies appear to be receiding at 50-100 km/s, one Mpc being equivalent to 3.2 million light years)

Answer 5

I just want to point out that space can and does expand faster than the speed of light. This does not violate relativity as no information is sent. The expansion of the universe only occurs on large scales and this is why you don't see atoms or galaxies being 'ripped' apart by spatial expansion.

Answer 6

i can not say no remember if the assumptions on your maths are suitable, yet sure, cosmologists do say that the universe is able to improve quicker than easy. issues interior of area can in basic terms pass as rapid as easy, yet area itself can improve at any speed. a substantial exchange to the great Bang thought replaced into the addition of an inflationary era interior the early existence of the universe, by ability of physicist Alan Guth. in this short quantity of time the universe prolonged at an impressive fee. From what I undergo in innovations, Guth proposed his thought as a proof of irregularitires interior the cosmic microwave historic past radiation from the WMAP. 2 substantial addendums are that the fee of the universe's enlargement isn't consistent (very severe for the time of Inflation, extremely reasonable in any different case yet accelerating decrease than the effect of dark potential), and that the universe isn't inevitably a hypersphere. The geometry of the universe is regarding typical relativity and the universe's entire potential.

Answer 7

Of what i heard it is expanding faster than the speed of light, there are some theories that say space it self is expanding.

Answer 8

Ah, a real Astro Physics major huh. Ponder this if that's the case then the fastest speed is the speed of sight, because light moves slow enough it can be seen but things like black holes are moving so fast that you can't see them.

Answer 9

No, its expanding but not at 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light)...if we were moving at that speed, every atom in the Universe would stretch to infinity (or so the Theory of Relativity suggests).

Answer 10

Their guess, this week, is that the components of the universe are expanding in the shape of a sphere.

Expansion at lightspeed is not possible, at least not under the Newtonian physics that we know.