Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 10:16 AM 3/26/99 -0500, Mike Lorrey wrote (amid a blizzard of inane
> drivel and some interesting but not quite relevant reminders from Billy):
>
> Me:
> >> The farthest galaxies will
> >> start to be carried away faster than light some 15 billion years hence.
> Mike:
> >So the Guardian thinks matter can travel faster than light? Whoever wrote
> that
> >is mistaken.
>
> Stay with me here, Michael. *Space* can obviously expand faster than
> light, and can carry along with it any matter and energy embedded locally
> in it (so to speak) How do you think the Big Bang could have happened so
> fast otherwise?
Since according to the models, the big bang expansion occured a smidgen under the speed of light and has been under micrscopic acceleration of that rate of speed ever since, then the speed of expansion even betwen two near galaxies should have passed the speed of light a long time ago, if what they say were true. The expansion acceleration does not go into the actualy speed, but the amount of dilation.
>
>
> >> Indeed, I wonder if it has any salience to the traditional explanation for
> >> Olber's paradox.
>
> >If the universe were eternal, we would have infinitely bright starscapes. We
> >do not, so it is not.
>
> Grrr. Olber's paradox is exactly that we don't see the whole sky as being
> as bright as the sun (*not* infinitely bright, due to inverse square
> diminishment), since every bit of it would be filled in by stars between
> stars beyond stars out to infinity.
infinite light divided by infinite distance squared is still infinity.
>
>
> The point of this fresh new and challenging perspective is that if the
> cosmos is *accelerating*, the sky goes darker much faster than you'd expect
> if only red shift were at work in a gravitationally decelerating cosmos.
> What's more, the assumption is (as I made clear) that this effect is not
> expected to become notable for as long into the future as the (local?)
> universe has already existed since the Bang: some 15 billion years.
When one extrapolates over such long curves, usually it is to figure out if you have any errors in your calculations. You look at the counterfactual conclusions off the end of the scale and say, "well, I messed up somewhere". This guy is apparently using it as a means of doing science, not eliminating errors.
--
TANSTAAFL!!!
Michael Lorrey, President
Lorrey Systems
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mailto:mike@lorrey.com
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