3 ms·

But if the star's visible on one side, it's close enough that it hasn't been redshifted into oblivion, right? The effects of cosmic inflation would only raise t

• eru 7y ago
  Yes. The scientific consensus is that the observable universe is vastly bigger than (oldest visible object's age * c * 2 * star's distance from us). See eg "We know that the Universe has been around for 13.8 billion years, but we also know we can see for 46 billion light-years. How is this possible?" at https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-is-the-universe-bigger-than-its-age-7a95cd59c605 https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-is-the-universe-bi... (And plenty of similar article when you Google 'size vs age of universe.) Inflation isn't even necessary for this effect, but might amplify it. Inflation is not necessary, because the cosmic background radiation is the furthest thing we can 'see'. And that background radiation stems from when the universe was 379,000 years old. Wikipedia says that inflation lasted at most until 10^−32 seconds after the big bang. Yet, the background radiation seems to come from much further away than your simple calculation would suggest. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background Size of observable universe is 93.016 billion light years. The age of the universe is estimated at 13.8 billion years. Observing gravitational waves might let us peek behind the curtain of the cosmic background radiation. Very exciting.