How could the universe expand faster than the speed of light? That seems impossible!

Einstein, although widely misquoted as doing so, did not assert or hypothesize that the speed of light is a constant. He asserted that it is everywhere the same without respect to the field of reference. This allows for a speed of light that remains uniform throughout the entire universe but not necessarily a constant over time.

There are those of us who are aware that at the beginning the speed of light and the speed of gravity were once equal. Since then the speed of light has decayed greatly and the speed of gravity has not. I refer you to the work of Barry Setterfield; he has a website.

Thomas, great point to bring up- indeed, when I referred to the “constant speed of light,” I meant as measured anywhere in our current universe. Thanks for helping to make the distinction.

Hello,

I have a couple of questions on this topic. Here are the facts:

2 flashlights are moving away from each other starting from a fixed point along a straight line.

The flashlights are pointed at each other.

Each flashlight is traveling at 1/2 the speed of light as measured from the fixed point.

The flashlights are traveling away from each other at the speed of light.

The question: If you turn the flashlights on after one minute, will the light ever reach the other flashlight?

If the light will never reach the other flashlight, and the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate, what happens when the speed of the expanding universe reaches 1/2 the speed of light?

That is the point in the first comment. The speed of light is not relative to the motion of the flashlight. The light emmited when you turn on the flashlight will travel at the speed of light towards the other flashlight and reach it at the third minute.

Since both flashlights are travelling at 1/2 light speed, after 1 minute both flashlights will be exactly one light minute apart. now the flashlights are turned on. the light from flashlight A will take 1 minute to reach the point when flashlight B was first turned on. Let’s call this point C. Meanwhile, flashlight B was still moving for 1 minute and will be 1/2 light minute further away from that point C. the light from flashlight A will take one more light minute to connect with flashlight B who after one minute will be exactly one light minute away from the point C.

This is only two minutes from the time that the flashlights were turned on. But it is 3 minutes from the start of the experiment.

Please correct the math if I am wrong, but I think it’s right.

so is there something like a photon or anything that can beat the speed of light because if there is i would be delighted to know!

The fact that we will always measure the speed of light as being the same, irrespective of our own speed, seems to have been demonstrated experimenatlly. Also, apparently proven is that clocks keep different time according to how they are moving. However – does anyone actually understand how these apparently logical impossibilties can be? Or why particles should change their behaviour if we look at them or that space is curved or how the whole universe can ever have been concentrated at a point? I once asked a physicist and he answered that no-one understands how these things can be – they just are so. It seems that we must ascribe them to magic?

Robert, it is a logical impossibility only because our conception of logic is flawed.

Greg:

If our concept of logic is flawed, then “someone” needs to show where the flaw is. If I´m going at 30mph and another car overtakes at 60, I´ll measure its relative speed at 30mph.. The same applies to a washing machine overtaking me in outerspace or a sound wave on the earth. But not to a photon – I will always measure its relative speed the same, no matter what my speed is. Why???
The Universe is thought by many physicists to have come from nothing – no space, no matter, no energy and no time – you can´t get any more nothigful than that. A quantum fluctuation in the nothing, they say. And what caused this quantum fluctuation? Nothing did – it was random. It´s all pretty unbelievable stuff, which scientists do not understand either. A physicist whom I exchanged emails with said there is a saying in his profession in the context of these impossible questions – keep your head down and calculate.

I don’t think that it is logic that is flawed (here)…

Let’s say two identical spaceships take off from an asteroid at the same time in opposite directions. Both have identical clocks. After accelerating to .9c, Ship A sends a signal. Everyone agrees that this travels the speed of light, and it takes some amount of time. Ship A waits an hour, and sends another signal, but now the two ships are further apart, so it takes longer for this signal to get there. Ship B therefore measures rather more than an hour between the signals and has no choice but to conclude that time is passing slower for ship A.

We know that isn’t true, it just took longer for the signal to get there. As it happens, however, if Ship B sends a signal of its own, it knows that it will travel towards Ship B at c relative to Ship B, which means that it is going at some lesser speed relative to Ship A according to Ship B’s reckoning of time. But Ship A’s time appears to be slower than Ship B’s (according to Ship B), so you have to take that into account, at which point you will realize that the light is still moving at c.

Both ships will be saying that time is passing more slowly on the other, so which is right? Well both… to be able to tell for sure, they’d have to “meet up” again, and to do that, one or both of them would have to accelerate, which changes their frame of reference.

I’m no physicist, but that is my understanding of it.

I don´t think your example is the same as the peculiarity I´m referring to. If I am travelling at 0.25%c and I´m overtaken by someone travelling at 0.50%c and simultaneously a photon overtakes both of us and we each measure its relative speed, we will both measure its relative speed at c – not 0.75c and 0.50c respectively. (Phew!!) I asked a physicist whether, even though we know it is so, he understood how it possibly could be. (Together with moving clocks keeping different times and a whole lot of other “counterintuitive” things). He replied that the various things I cited are so and we have to accept them – but no-one understands them.

Whilst the evidence is convincing that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate (Supernova Type 1a vs redshift plot), I have seen no evidence that the space-time grid is expanding faster than the speed of light, whether in the past nor in the present. Can anyone help here?

Does anybody really know what time it is? -Chicago

was there light was there time ?was there gravity before big bang?if so there is a problem,because of the gravity time connection.therefore it does not matter if it blew up or not.gravity was still there,with the time.can not have nothing,then something.impossible,bad theory.the gravity of the nothing object in space,has already reached out and influenced time and space,whether it blew up or not makes no difference.also it has been said,for a minute time it was going faster than the speed of light,then slowed down,then sped back up etc.well first of all,if it was going faster than the speed of light it would keep doing so.no reason for it to slow down,because there is nothing there right.well for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.a body in motion stays in motion,unless it is acted upon by an outside force.in the universe or universes.nothing can be added to or taken away from.etc.we may be going faster than the speed of light ourselves,do to all the different speeds we are moving through space,plus the main unknown one being the big bang itself.highly unlikely thathe singularity was just sitting there.probably had a lot of angular momentums in it from earlier journeys etc.also it has been said that the universe is expanding with the distant galaxies reaproaching the speed of light.a problem again,you would not be able to see any of the far away galaxies the way we can.because given their age 13 billion plus years plus. not enough time in age of said universe for them to get there.you can see these galaxies both directions from earth.this is a problem because this is way older than theory suggest.add it up.then there is the how long did it take to get there to see where it is now thing ,plus how long to make a galaxy thing.etc.we are not the center of the universe,but if you just used the speed of light from us to see them where they are now,does not add up.also due to the theory of infinite mass with speed increase to light theory,you would not be able to see those far away galaxies they would be squished down to various small sizes due to their close to light speeds.therefore everywhere out there. there should be squished galaxies do to their speed etc. like to know where they are in theory and such.also the missing mass thing, thats easy .the mass is outside our vision,past our telescopes past our instuments,that would explain a few of the holes in the theories .it is not the ether out there causing this it is mass gravity etc.light is influenced by gravity and probably distance,therefore things may not be as thy seem.anytime tou turn on a flashlight or anything in the electomagnectic spectrum,it is going faster than the speed of light due to all the angular momentums the earth is envolved in.

Interesting question and interesting commnets.

Here’s my take:

I start with the premise that time and distance are inseparable.

As a further shrinking of nature’s elements, I propose that distance and time are two sides of the same coin. I explain this notion with a mind experiment. Imagine that two scientists are conducting a test of the speed of light and they synchronize their very accurate watches. As part of the test, one moves to a location that is 186.3 miles away from the other, which is 1/1000th the distance light is thought to travel in a second. When the traveling scientist reached his/her location, the two would in effect be one light-millisecond of space-distance from each other. I contend that it doesn’t matter if the scientist got to the new location via a high-speed rocket, was teleported at the speed of light, or walked. Despite what his/her watch read (which, of course, would be affected by travel speed), once there, (as I will explain forthwith) he/she would be one light millisecond (of space-distance) behind the other and vice versa. Now, imagine that the two scientists are conducting the Aspect experiment and they each can witness one member of a pair of complementary particles. When one changes the spin direction of one member, the other member will appear to change instantly because the other physicist is already one light-millisecond away from the other. In other words, the physicist has already consumed the travel time as time and distance [in the physical world] are equal.
Consider the same experiment using red and green lights. Imagine that each time the spin of one member changed a light would immediately turn to green if it were red and red if it were green. The opposite member of the pair would turn the same way so that every time one turned green the other would turn red. Imagine that the lights are on a high tower and there is a telescope at each end monitoring the light changes. If the spin were changed for one member, as soon as anyone witnessed it, the light would instantly change. The opposite would also be true to the observer; yet there would in fact be a lag.
Imagine that the watches of these observers are synchronized with a huge clock equidistant above them, and they each change the spin direction at exactly five minute intervals starting at noon. At exactly five past noon, one physicist would witness a change in direction, at exactly ten past, the other physicist would witness a change in direction, and neither would detect the one light millisecond delay because noon to each observer would occur one light millisecond earlier. It would seem that light is given a head start equal to its anticipated travel time so that it always seems to get to its end point instantly. We can never measure this difference because, as Einstein understood, our information about an event is limited by the speed of ‘c’. The time/distance limitation is due to the fact that we are not seeing the light directly; we can only witness the source of the light, which is separated by distance, which is directly tied to time.
The opposite effect occurs if we were to measure the speed of light by bouncing a beam and then measuring the delay. A fairly long-range version of this test is done by bouncing a beam off of a mirror on the Moon. In truth, as scientists are certain of the speed of light, this test is conducted to measure the distance between the Earth and Moon rather than measuring the speed of light. Nevertheless it supports my contention about the inseparability of distance and time. Here is a brief description of that test.
In a visit to the Moon about thirty years ago astronauts placed a mirror such that one of its several facets always points toward Earth. Scientists on Earth periodically fire a laser beam at this mirror and then measure the travel time of the pulse, which takes about two and a half seconds for the round trip. They consistently get results that indicate light travel at just slightly less than 300,000 kilometers per second. This seems to confirm the fixed speed of light hypothesis; however, let us consider this experiment carefully.
There are three spatial coordinates which measure locations in space: length, width and depth. Along, with other reasons, because things change and move about, Einstein added time as a fourth dimension. The three location coordinates combined with the time qualifier define the space within our ever-changing four-dimensional universe in a practical sense. With this construct in mind, you can consider the three location coordinates in which we and everything else in the universe move about as a continuum of space-moments, which I call “spoments.” Now let’s look at the important function of speed.
Speed is a calculation of the distance between two points, divided by the time it takes to make the trip. As with all equations, we can employ all its variations; e.g., distance=speed*time, and/or time= distance/speed, in order to derive any of the values as long as we know the other two. Considering these equations, the method of measuring distances between spoments in our four-dimensional universe is directly affected by the speed of travel between them. The result is that we can conceivably have the distance between any two spoments as zero if speed equals distance. In other words, if the time-distance between spoments equals their space-distance, then they effectively occupy the same space! In my model this precisely defines the realm of the metaphysical because in that world everything is virtually connected.

I say much more about this in a book published earlier this yaer, but this is the flavor of linking of time to distance and an important aspect of how space can expand faster than “c”.

Look guys…My plane goes faster than the speed of light. i fly to the Andromeda Galaxy everyday.

If the space between galaxies is expanding at greater than the speed of light, how is it possible that any light reaches us from those galaxies at all?

For example, 2 galaxies are 10 billion light years apart, and the space between is expanding at C. After 5 billion years the light from one has travelled half the original distance, however, due to the expansion the remaining distance to travel is 10 billion light years.

How can light overcome the expansion of space if it is greater than C? Surely galaxies should only be visible while the space between them is expanding at less than C.

@Nardwolf

Light is does not travel relative to the expanding light sources (galaxies).

Question – somewhere I read that we cannot measure motion of a body relative to “Absolute Space”, that motion of a body can only be measured relative to other bodies. Is that because Absolute Space is expanding faster than the speed of light (which would make sense of the fact that bodies confined to speed of light therefore have no no motion relative to Absolute Space) ?

Douchemaster T,

I agree, but light still needs to travel from point a to point b. If space has expanded (faster than light) between point a and b, how can light overcome that expanded distance?

One other point, if space is expanding between galaxies (but oddly not inside them) how is it possible for galaxies to collide? Galaxies move very slowly compared to these expansion velocities.

I am not a physicist, but I think I can explain the constant speed of light very simply. The faster you travel, whether on a planet or in a spaceship, the slower your personal experience of time is (it is relative). When you look out in space, whether up in the sky or out of your spaceship, everything appears to be speeding up due to your personal experience of time (the faster you go, the slower your own time seems) versus the rest of the universe. Therefore the light actually catches you faster because you are experiencing slower time (the two negate each other, creating a constant speed of light).

This is very similar to gravity. The mass of an object increases its attraction (speed), but the greater the mass, the slower its acceleration (the two negate each other and so all objects fall at the same rate). Galileo proved this by dropping two objects of different masses from a great height and showing that they landed at the same time. 350 years later we proved it again on the moon with the famous feather and lead ball experiment.

A car traveling 30mph on a 2 mile long track will take 2 minutes to travel over 1/2 the track. At what speed must the car travel over the 2nd half of the track to average 60mph over the entire 2 miles?

There is one thing which can travel at more than the speed of light. Suppose we put the Queen in a rocket propelled outwards from Earth at 0.9c (good idea if you ask me). After 2 years it crashes into a piece of space debris and she is killed. At that very instant the Prince of Wales becomes King, despite the fact that she is 1.8 light years away. So monarchy travels at infinite speed. Of course it helps that it has no mass (nor any point either, if you ask me).

Even after the universe was quite old, perhaps a few million years or so; there was no gravity until galaxies began forming. Attraction and repulsion? Yes. But gravity is an intrinsic quality of magnetism and several others, of speed.

the speed of light reflects the speed at which the university is expanding at. Nothing in the universe can go faster than the speed the university is expanding at. Time is the reciprocal of the relative speed an object moves relative to the speed the universe is expansion at.

to post 3. – as long as each flash light is traveling slower than the speed of light then the light from each flashlight will reach the other.The point of time you switch on the flash light is irrelevant.

“This is why cops have to stay parked.” No they don’t. They can clock you from a parked position, moving towards you, moving away from you or moving behind you, and especially if you are driving thru Wisconsin.

It is quite obvious that scientists have the definitions of time and space incorrect.
Rather than arguing about how to fit the inaccuracies into “our” theories, let’s break down the fundamental dogma of our belief structure and simply start from scratch.

Here’s an intro:
1. Time is incorrectly defined by movement in a cesium atom.
2. Time is not relative.
3. Space is always moving.
4. There are only constants in a suspended animation.
5. Consider space a medium rather than an empty vacuum.
Now, Begin.

I should add the following because someone is bound to ask:
6. There is no gravity.
7. There is a singularity of absolute silence.
8. There is no anti-matter (or anti-photon).
Enjoy.

In the above example, light will be received (or reach) from flash light send after 1 hour travelling to each other after 3 hours.

I did some calculation and found out that light flashed after 2 hours will reach each other after 8 hours.

I did the calculation graphically.

I just want to know how do we calculate light flashed after successive hours say every one hour. Graphically it would be exhausting.

How can it be done Mathematically?

Suppose I want to know the time taken to reach other, if light is flased after 5 hour travel time?

Reference to post 3, 4, 5 & 25

In the above example, light will be received (or reach) from flash light send after 1 hour travelling to each other after 3 hours.

I did some calculation and found out that light flashed after 2 hours will reach each other after 8 hours.

I did the calculation graphically.

I just want to know how do we calculate light flashed after successive hours say every one hour. Graphically it would be exhausting.

Suppose I want to know the time taken to reach other, if light is flased after 5 hour travel time? How can it be done Mathematically?

I just want to know this infinite expansion of space is taking place in which container or medium.I am not very sure about my language.Suppose there is a balloon with dots/specks on it and we inflate the balloon. The specks are moving away from each other as the balloon expands. What is the limit in the case of the galaxies moving away from each other? That means, is the space in which these galaxies are moving away is infinite? So at the time of the Big Bang, what was there outside the cosmic egg which exploded? Kindly somebody explain.

How could the universe expand faster than the speed of light?

Time is the variable. Can one body of mass travel away from another body of mass at the speed of light? Of course. If a bird flies in one direction at ten kilometers per hour, and another flies in the opposite direction at the same speed, neither are flying at twenty Kilometers per hour but that is the speed of separation.

Multiplied by the vastness of the universe, it is quite possible that our earth and some unknown masses are not only traveling away from each other at the speed of light, but at an even higher speed.

Galilean Relativity explains why two objects moving at .9c in opposite directions from a center point are in fact not moving at 1.8c away from each other. The velocities just do not add that way.

So, how can distant objects be moving away from each at faster than c? The reason is because the space between them is expanding. The objects are not moving through space faster than c.

Imagine two ballplayers on the opposite side of the field. One ballplayer throws a ball to the other. If you somehow expand the playing field faster than the ball is traveling it would appear as if the ballplayers are moving away faster than the ball can travel. This is not the case because the ballplayers never moved, the playing field just got bigger.

hi. There. I. Am. The. Master. Chief. Spartan. 117. From. Halo. We. Have. Exedded. Infinity. Ludicrus. Speed. Thats. Right. We. Were. At. Infint. Ludicrus. Speed. Before your. Universe. Was. Created. Halo. Anti. Buy. Buy. Technolgies. From. Halo. Or. Heaven. Too. Earth. Only. Takes. 20. Minutes

Hi all. I have a quick and to the point question: if we forget about using the term ‘speed of light’ and use actual measurements – is it possible for an object to move faster than 300 million metres per second? If not, what would restrict an object from moving faster than this?

Dear Dr….,

Please to visit in my web site ‘ http://www.timeflow.org ‘ And Please can you test my ‘Time Flow’ Formula? Many Thanks.

Sincerely

Salih Kırcalar

Dear Dr….,

Very small free roaming particles lifetime very short.[free photons, free notron, free proton,free
electron ,vs].And their lifetime is its energy Mc2. Protons are observed to be stable and their theoretical minimum half-life is 1×10’36 years.Grand unified theories generally predict. That proton
decay should take place, although experiments so far have only resulted in a lower limit 10’35 years for proton’s lifetime. I see that. The earth lifetime is its Mc’2 energy. When this is calculated
the lifetime of earth.

Earth Mass= 5.97×10’24 kg. the lifetime 1 kg of mass in space is 2851927903,26 years.

Earth Lifetime is 1.7×10’34 years. I think that, this is a very interesting result.

Best regarts
Salih Kırcalar