does the universe expand faster than light

#Does the universe expand faster than light how to#

The universe has been expanding ever since the big bang about 13.8 billion years ago. The balloon is a model of the universe which is constantly stretching outwards. How does the universe expand – explanation Remove the clip and keep blowing up the balloon.Draw dots on the balloon with a black marker, these represent the the milky way galaxy.Blow up the balloon so its about the size of an orange.

#Does the universe expand faster than light how to#

You’ll need:īlack Marker How to demonstrate the expansion of the universe The bigger we get, the slower time gets, but because we are a part of the space-time fabric, we cannot feel these changes. Thus, no violation of the 'speed limit' that the speed of light imposes has occurred. As the universe expands, at whatever speed, even faster than the speed of light, it is not just space that is expanding, but space-time. This is a very simple experiment to demonstrate the Universe expansion theory. Explanation: The expansion of the universe does not mean that matter is being moved at a speed greater than c, but only that space is being created at a rate that is greater than the speed of light. Dark energy is though to make up between 67-70% of the universe. What is dark energy?ĭark energy is how scientists refer to the force that is thought to be behind the expansion of the universe. Dark matter is thought to make up between 25-28% of the universe. Scientists think stars and planets would not move as they do in empty space, but so far we don’t have the ability to see or measure dark matter. Much of the universe is actually empty space ( dark matter and dark energy ) and the things we can see ( ordinary matter ) make up only 4-5% of the universe. The expansion of space causes the wavelength of the photon to stretch, so when it arrives at Earth, it has a longer wavelength than when it left.

Scientists estimate that there are around 100 billion galaxies!! If you think the Milky Way ( our galaxy ) is thought to have between 200 and 300 billion stars like our sun, it’s pretty impossible to comprehend. It’s hard to imagine just how big the universe is. Scientists think the edge of the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light! How big is the Universe? Dark energy is persistent, which imparts a constant impulse to the expansion of the universe, which makes galaxies accelerate away. Galaxies, planets and everything in between. There’s absolutely no reason why a non-scientist shouldn’t be able to follow why dark energy makes the universe accelerate, given just a bit of willingness to think about it. When we talk about the universe we mean everything that exists. This page was last updated June 27, 2015.Today we have an investigation for little astronomers to demonstrate how the universe is expanding.ĭid you know we are part of a spiral galaxy called the Milky Way? Earth is located in an arm of the spiral. There is also good evidence that in the early universe that the universe may have expanded much faster than the speed of light. Increase the speed of light leads to increasing of. According to the theory of inflation, the Universe grew by a factor of 10 to the sixtieth power in less than 10 to the negative thirty seconds, so the 'edges' of the Universe were expanding away from each other faster than the speed of light however, as long as those edges can't see each other (which is what we always assume), there is no physical law that forbids it. How much faster than light is the universe expanding In 2001, Wendy Freedman determined space to expand at 72 kilometers per second per megaparsec roughly 3.3 million light years meaning that for every 3.3 million light years further away from the earth you are, the matter where you are, is moving away from earth 72 kilometers a second faster. From this point the speed of light is constantly increasing, asymptotically tending to a constant limit. The expansion of the Universe is a 'growth' of the spacetime itself this spacetime may move faster than the speed of light relative to some other location, as long as the two locations can't communicate with each other (or, in terms of light rays, these two parts of the Universe can't see each other). The latter is forbidden by fundamental physical laws, but the former is allowed that is, as long as you are not transmitting any information (like a light pulse), you can make something happen at a speed that is faster than that of light. You ask a good question, one whose answer lies in the subtle difference between expansion that is faster than the speed of light and the propagation of information that is faster than the speed of light. Some sources indicate that the big bang caused an expansion which traveled faster than the speed of light. In the first approximation, the Universes expansion is described by the Hubbles law v H R, according to which the relative speed v of two objects in the.