Ok so the diameter of the observable universe is 93 billion light years. That means the distance from the center where the big bang occured to the outer edges of our (observable) universe is roughly 46,5 billion lightyears.
The fastest speed in the universe is the speed of light and the universe is 13,7 billion years old.
Doesn’t that mean that the farthest anything can be from the centre of the universe is 13,7 billion lightyears?
In: Planetary Science
I believe you are making the assumption that the stuff 46.5 billion light years must have traveled thru 46.5 billion light years of space in 13.7 billion years. But this is not how it works.
Back near the time of the big bang, there was less space in between things, so that distant stuff didn’t have to travel as far since the universe had not expanded much yet. Once some expansion happened and stuff spread out a little, further expansion of the space in-between the Earth and that distant stuff made that stuff more distant without it actually moving very much.
Sort of like putting two marks a short distance apart on a rubber band while it’s not stretched, then stretching out the rubber band. The marks will appear to move further apart, but they never moved along the rubber band. In this example, the rubber band is the universe, and the two marks are Earth and some distant example object.
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