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13 Billion Years Old !


Canada Bob

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There seems a lot of talk the last couple of weeks about how they can see what the Universe looked like some 13 Billion years ago, I just can't get my head round that.

How can you see something that happeded 13 Billion years ago, unless we were initially travelling away from it faster than the speed of light, but now we have dropped a gear of two, and the light from that event is now catching up to us ?

13 Billion years though, don't seem much in the scheme of things, if we'd saved just a quid a year we'd have had enough money to bail out HBOS.

Second question, what shape is the universe, I reckon it's like a soccer ball, one that started out the size of an atom, but due to the Big Bang became hollow in the middle and went bigger {like a soccer ball} as the released energy pumped it all up.

I reckon the Universe is like the wall of a soccer ball, sort of thin but thick enough so that galaxies near us are in the same stuff, but as the ball/universe expands most of us move away from each other. That begs the question, is there time and space, or anything at all in the core of the ball/universe.

Third question, what's on the other side of the ball ? is that where the images of the historic events of the universe are displayed for us ? is that what we see when we think we're looking at events 13 Billion years ago, events "recorded" in the inside skin of the other side of the soccer ball ? cause I don't think there's anything 13 Billion years old on our side of the ball... makes you think don't it, I'll ponder this over a pint this afternoon, maybe the lads at the Whetherspoons have it all figured out...

By the way, "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" got it wrong, the answer isn't 42, it's 71 {yea, really}...

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So many questions... but the two on my mind are:

1. Whats beyond the ' football' ?

2. How long can it expand before it shrinks again? - further to that, if it starts to shrink, will we get closer to Dingwall?

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So many questions... but the two on my mind are:

1. Whats beyond the ' football' ?

It'll probably morph into a Rugby Ball...

2. How long can it expand before it shrinks again?

I can only speak from personal experience, so I'd say about 8 minutes...

further to that, if it starts to shrink, will we get closer to Dingwall?

No need to worry on that score, everything will shrink at the same rate, so things will appear to stay the same, the only difference you might observe would be the bus would get there quicker...

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So many questions... but the two on my mind are:

1. Whats beyond the ' football' ?

2. How long can it expand before it shrinks again? - further to that, if it starts to shrink, will we get closer to Dingwall?

Taking things possibly more serious than the questioner meant...

1. Probably the most common theory now is that we're like a bubble in soapy water. So around us are other universes starting up, growing and collapsing.

2. Not sure how long but will it shrink? I believe it's all to do with black holes. If there's not 'enough' then the universe continues to expand but eventually all the fuel for stars runs out and there's just a black vacuum for eternity. Or else, if there are enough black holes, the combined gravity draws space back together, time runs backwards and we hit a big crunch, then start again (possibly).

As to Bob, we're in the middle and all of time/space. It's not like an explosion, more an expansion. Put a dot on a balloon and inflate it. The dot increasing is what's happening to the universe.

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I prefer the Monty Python theory (at work and youtube is blocked so not sure if this link will work)

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From what they say we could well be like a bubble in Aero, one of many Universe's but the thing is, how can they see something that's 13 Billion years back in time ?

At that point in time my guess is that 13 Billion years ago the Universe wasn't 13 Billion light years across, in fact how could it have been IF they say that our Universe is only 14-15 Billion years old !

If we could roll events back 13 Billion years, everything would have been in a time and space that couldn't be much more than 2 Billion light years across {hope yer following me on this}, so if light from any object shone at that time it couldn't take 11 Billion years to reach us could it, unless we {our bit of the Universe} were {initially} travelling faster than the speed of light. If we did exceed the speed limit and from what I hear recently we could do, then the light wouldn't be able to catch up with us, but if at some later point we dropped down a gear or so, the light that started out 13 Billion years ago would start gaining on us, sort of "coming out of the dark" and appearing to us as though we were "looking back in time".

Fair enough I'm no Stephen Hawking, yet you don't have to be a jockey to know a horse when you see one, but the only way I can get my head around is if when the Universe was a couple of Billion years old we sped away from some other bits of the Universe faster than the speed of light, and then {more recently} slowed down a bit...

Makes sense to me, and the lads in the White Lion, {there's a certain clarity afforded via 4-5 pints of Mild}...

I reckon we're on a soccer ball that's still being inflated, one where the wall of the ball is made up by the depth of Galaxies, a thick walled ball. But... the only part of the Universe that we can see is the "patch" that we are on, the other bits can't be seen or detected because we are heading away from them, and they for their own part are heading away from us at combined speeds well over the speed of light.

This "theorem" would account for the "missing matter" that they say can't be accounted for, I reckon it's there but we will never be able to see it or detect it, it's on the other side of the ball...

If my theorem is right, there could be a Nobel in it, but I couldn't claim all the credit as the lads and the ale have helped clarify this revelation, so it would have to be "Canada Bob, et-al".

Seriously though I'd appreciate your thoughts on the above, 'specially as to the size of a 2 Billion year old Universe, it can't be bigger than 2 Billion light years {in any direction} can it ?

Edited by Canada Bob
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And here was me thinking it all happened as recently as a seven day period beginning October 23rd 4004BC! :rotflmao:

For the most part {even today} that might be the only metaphorical explanation that folks are able to relate to.

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And here was me thinking it all happened as recently as a seven day period beginning October 23rd 4004BC! :rotflmao:

For the most part {even today} that might be the only metaphorical explanation that folks are able to relate to.

I'm sure Bishop Ussher, who came up with the 4004BC idea, has been well and truly savaged by everyone from Huxley to Dawkins.

By the way, I think the idea of the expanding universe is that it started off around 13bn years ago as something quite compact which blew outwards and has been expanding ever since. The rate of expansion is quite slow relative to the speed of light 93 x 10 (8) m/s) but enough to shift light coming from distant parts towards the red end (longer wavelength) of the spectrum by what is known as the Doppler Effect. The shift is small but measurable and depends on the ratio 1/(square root of 1 minus v-squared /c-squared) where v is the speed of expansion and c is the speed of light.

A similar equation exists to describe the manner in which mass changes with velocity and this explains how super-light speeds should not be possible since mass becomes infinite even when v = c.

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I'm sure Bishop Ussher, who came up with the 4004BC idea, has been well and truly savaged by everyone from Huxley to Dawkins.

I guess the guy was just was trying to explain to uneducated folks the best way he could things that they hoped to comprehend.

By the way, I think the idea of the expanding universe is that it started off around 13bn years ago as something quite compact which blew outwards and has been expanding ever since.

Yea, it's just like a football being inflated...

The rate of expansion is quite slow relative to the speed of light 93 x 10 (8) m/s)

Can't be though can it ? if light traveling from an infant universe it can't have had {let's say} an "age / dimension" greater than 2 Billion light years. That's the size the ball would be limited to, the distance that light can travel in 2 Billion years, so the size of the Universe can't have been more than 2 Billion light years across.

That being the case, the furthest that any point in the Universe would have been no more than 2 Billion light years away from us. So let's say some {light emitting} point/image was at the opposite end of the Universe we would see that light approximately 2 Billion years later {not 13 Billion years later}.

This presumes your premise that "we" {or bit of the Universe} wasn't travelling faster than the speed of light, if we weren't then the "image" would have flashed past us around 11 Billion years ago...

OTOH, if that point of light/image was heading our way at the speed of light, but we were out pacing it, then we would never actually see it at all ! unless of course we dropped a gear and slowed down. If that happened then the light/image would start to gain on us, and eventually be observable by us.

It's like being on the Motorway when an car just behind us is going at 70 MPH {the legal limit of light let's say}, but we are super fuelled and going at 80 MPH, the car/event won't catch us up, but if we eventually slow down then the car / light will catch us up, and eventually pass us.

I guess that the faster we were going the more distant the image fell behind us, so if we were going super fast even for a relatively small amount of time, we would zoom way ahead of the image travelling at the speed of light.

When we start to run out of what ever propelled us to travel faster than the speed of light our speed drops and the image becomes observable...

but enough to shift light coming from distant parts towards the red end (longer wavelength) of the spectrum by what is known as the Doppler Effect. The shift is small but measurable and depends on the ratio 1/(square root of 1 minus v-squared /c-squared) where v is the speed of expansion and c is the speed of light.

Yea but, No but... that's what Einstien thought but it buggered him up, spent years trying to measure things by redshift,

only to have Hubble explain it to him as follows...

At the time of discovery and development of Hubble’s law it was acceptable to explain redshift phenomenon as a Doppler shift in the context of special relativity, and use the Doppler formula to associate redshift z with velocity. However, this approximate relation between velocity and redshift is accurate only for values of z somewhat less than 1. Today the velocity-distance relationship of Hubble's law is viewed as a theoretical result with velocity to be connected with observed redshift not by the Doppler effect, but by a cosmological model relating recessional velocity to the expansion of the universe. Even for small z the velocity entering the Hubble law is no longer interpreted as a Doppler effect, although at small z the velocity-redshift relation for both interpretations is the same.

In 1968, the first good estimate of H0, 75 km/s/Mpc, was published by Allan Sandage,but it would be decades before a consensus was achieved.

Redshift velocity

The redshift z often is described as a redshift velocity, which is the recessional velocity that would produce the same redshift if it were caused by a linear Doppler effect (which, however, is not the case, as the shift is caused in part by a cosmological expansion of space, and because the velocities involved are too large to use a non-relativistic formula for Doppler shift). This redshift velocity can easily exceed the speed of light.[16] In other words, to determine the redshift velocity vrs, the relation: v_{rs} \equiv cz \ ,

Could it be that our little bit {and other bits} of the Universe flew off faster than the speed of light, and as Einstein sort of proved, the faster you go, the faster time seems to pass outside of your "domain".

So, maybe our bit of the Universe is {say} only 3-5 Billion years old {on our slowed down time scale} whist the bits outside our domain seem {to us} to have whipped through time {and therefore become older} than us ?

The bottom line being, time isn't a constant for everything everywhere, and maybe, just maybe {I think it's odds on} the speed of light can, and has been exceeded, by us !!!

Edited by Canada Bob
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