If the universe is accelerating....?

Question

Someone on here that sounded like they knew what they were talking about said that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating. Next I was told that matter cannot reach the speed of light.

My assumption is that, say when matter reaches 99% the speed of light, then 99.9999999%, then 99.99999999999999%, eventually wouldn't it either stop, or reverse, or would it keep essentially adding "9's"?

Answer 1

The Big Rip theory is just a theory. Hopefully that won't happen. Actually, if the universe has to end, I would like a spectacular Big Crunch.
Matter can reach the speed of light. Just not matter that has mass.
The expansion of space doesn't apply to speed.
Imagine a balloon with dots on it. As the baloon is blown up, the dots on the sides of the balloon move farther away from each other. The dots aren't moving, so the speed is zero relative to the dots.

Matter is essentially energy. If collided with antimatter, all the matter turns into energy.
Energy does the same thing. We don't know how to, but energy can change into matter.
So, the more energy one uses, the more mass the particle gains if the particle isn't massless to begin with. The only particles that can go at the speed of light are photons and gravitons. Why? Because both light and gravity have an infinite range.
As you go closer and closer to the speed of light, you get heavier and heavier. You can't reach the speed of light, because your mass would reach infinite. The estimated mass-energy of the universe is 10^69ish kilograms. So, you can never reach it.

Answer 2

One of the latest discoveries is that the universe is accelerating more than what the Hubble Law predicts.

This is a recently discovered force or energy and the scientists have named it "DARK ENERGY". Up to the moment they don´t have the slightest idea of what it is, where it comes from, why it is acting like this, but there it is.

So matter is accelerating faster than usual in galaxies that are some 4,500 million light years away.

Some authors have dared to say that maybe we are seeing the formation of another universe, the bubble appearing from the bubble, etc.

Matter will accelerate but never could reach the speed fo light because the energy needed for that would be infinite......or.......matter would transform into energy and in this way it could reach the speed of light. Remember the old equation: E=mc2

Answer 3

The speed of light limit does not apply to the expansion of space. WIth an expansion rate of about 80 kps per megaparsec (determined by the Hubble telescope in 1998), the expansion of space exceeeds the speed of light at about 15 billion lightyears distance. Observations of supernova using Hubble discovered that the expansion rate is accellerating. This is attributed to dark energy, which has a negative gravitational force and is created by the expansion of space. So as the universe expands its expansion rate accellerates. In about 20 billion years the expansion of space will tear apart galaxies, then solar systems, then planets, then atoms.

Answer 4

yes, both of those things u heard are true.

as something accelerates its mass increases, i doubt we could notice this with even the fastest crafts we have. but once u start getting to a good fraction of the speed of light your mass starts to noticeably increase exponentially. since the mass increases so does the energy needed to move it. and it would take infinite time to get to that speed. and it would have infinite gravity since it has infinite mass, and infinite gravity means the universe collapses onto itself into a singularity.

so since it takes infinite time to get to that speed it would never reach lightspeed, just get closer. so yes, it would just keep adding 9's

so how does that tie into the galaxies? just because they are accelerating doesnt mean they will forever. they are accelerating because of dark energy. i dont think there is enough dark energy to propel 150 billion galaxies to 99.9999 c.

o, and do not listen to much the first poster said. anyone that pretends to know what dark energy is must not know much. not even the worlds top scientists know what dark energy is or anything at all about it.

Answer 5

We don't know for a fact it is accelerating because of relativity factors.

If Object A is travelling at a fixed speed of X
and Object B is slowing from X to X- 0.001

It would look like the universe was accelerating when actually you are slowing down and the rest of the universe isn't.

Answer 6

Hi. The force needed to get each 0.0000000000001 increases and approaches infinity. The mass increases and approaches infinity as well. (Actually these are complimentary.) So, no. It does not 'stop'.