3 ms·
Get ready for this answer because it is wild: There universe grew way, way faster than the speed of light. > At this point of the very early universe, the metr
by mabbo 4y ago
Get ready for this answer because it is wild: There universe grew way, way faster than the speed of light.
> At this point of the very early universe, the metric that defines distance within space suddenly and very rapidly changed in scale, leaving the early universe at least 10^78 times its previous volume (and possibly much more). This is equivalent to a linear increase of at least 10^26 times in every spatial dimension—equivalent to an object 1 nanometre (10−9 m, about half the width of a molecule of DNA) in length, expanding to one approximately 10.6 light-years (100 trillion kilometres) long in a tiny fraction of a second. This change is known as inflation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe
Objects within space can't move faster than light. But space itself can stretch fast enough that they objects within the universe are having the distance between them grow faster than the speed of light.
- canjobear 4y agoInflation was way before the time seen in this image.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mabbo 4y agoBut it still answers the question asked in the parent comment.
- denton-scratch 4y agoNot really - inflation ended 300,000 years before galaxies began to form. Galaxies formed at a time when the expansion of the Universe was proceeding much more sedately. The question was (paraphrasing) why does light from something 2 billion LY away take 12 billion years to arrive? Inflation notwithstanding, I would like to know the answer.