I know that the universe is 13 billion years old and the fastest anything could be is the speed of light so if the universe is expanding as fast as it could be wouldn’t the universe be 13 billion light years big? But I’ve searched and it’s 93 billion light years big, so is the universe expanding faster than the speed of light?
In: 938
Disclaimer: end of work day for me, can’t guarantee there are no computation errors, especially on how many zeroes lol. Feel free to correct any mistake.
The rate of expansion of the universe is a function of distance.
Two points in space will drive away from each other, the farthest, the fastest.
According to Wikipedia, the rate of expansion is defined as 73.24 meters per second per megaparsec (a megaparsec is a unit of distance, equal to 3.08*10^19 km).
Which means that:
– two points 1 billion kilometers apart will drift off one another at the speed of 0.000000002 meters per second;
– two points 1 megaparsec apart will drift off one another at the speed of 73.24 meters per seconds;
– two points distanced by more than ~4,096,122 megaparsec will indeed drift away one another at the speed of light and faster. Thus, anything at a distance equal or greater than 13,360,778,450 light years from Earth will drift off in the distance faster than light.
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