[Boot Hill]

Other related FreeRepublic threads:
Will Spacecraft ever Go Faster than the speed of Light? (posted 2/16/03 by vannrox)

--Boot Hill

[txzman]

Hey, but everyone knows Science has it all figured out. Age of the Universe, no need of God, understanding of everything you need to know about mankind.

[ricpic]

"Theoretical physics is populated by some of the smartest people outside of Wall Street...."

He lost me right there.

[camle]

"Consider the horizon problem, a staple of popular science books. Look out (with a suitably powerful telescope) at a galaxy 10 billion light-years away. According to the logic of the Big Bang theory, the light was emitted 10 billion years ago and is just now reaching this part of the universe. Now turn around and look 10 billion light-years in the opposite direction. You have successfully observed two regions of the universe that themselves are 20 billion light-years apart. Since the whole universe is only 15 billion years old, they will never be able to see each other or (since nothing travels faster than light) interact in any way."

uh nope. if you beleive this then you beleive that by "looking the other way(direction)" we can see 10 million years into the future. if we look at another galaxy 10 million light years away, it still is in the past, which would put it as a contemporary of the first galaxy.

if all the logic in this story is this shoddy, then methinks he hath consumed too many wee cups.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Zeffrin Cochran could tell you that this guy is right.

[Ecliptic]

It didn't have to be light that traveled faster than light when the universe was created; the universe may have been created that far apart to begin with....

[Sloth]

I don't know what's supposed to be so weird here. If 2 objects leave the same point at t=0, traveling in opposite directions at a speed of ~0.667c, then in 15 billion years they will be 20 billion light years apart. Big deal.

BTW, how do we know they didn't just *pass* each other at that point? :)

[Fury]

I'm OK with the premise of the article, but will butter still stick to my toast?

[Boot Hill]

World's Most Powerful Telescopes Team Up With a Lens in Nature to Discover Farthest Galaxy in the Universe (source)

An international team of astronomers has discovered the most distant galaxy in the universe to date. They found it by combining the unique sharpness of the Hubble telescope with the light-collecting power of the W. M. Keck Telescopes with an added boost from a gravitational lens in space.

The results show the young galaxy is as far as 13 billion light-years from Earth, based on an estimated age for the universe of approximately 14 billion years. The Hubble picture at left shows the young galaxy as a red crescent to the lower right of center. The galaxy's image is brightened, magnified, and smeared into this arc-shape by the gravitational influence of an intervening galaxy cluster, which acts like a gigantic lens. The image at upper right is a close-up of the "gravitationally lensed" galaxy. In the picture at lower right, astronomers have "unsmeared" the galaxy, revealing the galaxy's normal appearance.

A galaxy 13E9 ly distant in a 14E9 year old universe? Hmmmm!

--Boot Hill

[Junior]

There was a young lady named Bright
Who could travel much faster than light.
She started one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.

[Consort]

The more I hear about the "Big Bang," the less I believe it. And, light from a very distant object takes so long to reach us that it's possible that the original source of the light has since been sucked into a black hole and re-emerged in another part of the universe much closer to the Earth and we are now seeing the "same" source of light from two different directions at the same time; from the original very distant location and from the new closer location.

[Ichneumon]

Everywhere he turns, Magueijo tells us, he finds himself surrounded by stupidity. He refuses to submit papers to the journal Nature (the staff there is surely heartbroken) until the cosmology editor is castrated. (João the Iconoclast puts this in cruder terms.) The timid souls who fail to appreciate the daring of his speculations are likewise reviled. "Clearly something as wild as V.S.L. is an affront to their self-respect; so they need to see it fail."

Typical crank behavior. "They don't believe me because of The Conspiracy, not because my theories are faulty!"

Or maybe they just think he's wrong.

Bingo.

No matter how weird or unconventional his theories, if they were self-consistent and explanatory, he'd have no trouble getting people to admit he had something interesting. Relativity and quantum theory were both completely bizarre and contrary to orthodox theory when they were introduced, but had no problem finding converts, because they *worked*, and no holes could be found in them.

[Ichneumon]

Some-folks-need-some-cosmological-principles-explained-better-than-I-can-do-it-ping.

This would also be a good place to repost your "Big Bang predictions versus observations" plots, in response to the Big Bang skeptics.

[scouse]

According to the logic of the Big Bang theory, the light was emitted 10 billion years ago and is just now reaching this part of the universe.
Now turn around and look 10 billion light-years in the opposite direction. You have successfully observed two regions of the universe that themselves are 20 billion light-years apart.

When you are standing at the North Pole no matter which way you face you are always looking south. Therefore this begs the question; Is the Earth at the North Pole of the Universe?.

[ArloWatson]

Multiple Big Bangs

I've got a layman's theory that there may have been other "Big Bangs" in the universe, but that they are farther than 15 Billion Light Years away, so we haven't detected them yet.