if space is expanding and the known universe is wider in light years than years old it is, aren’t opposite ends of the universe traveling faster than light in relation to each other?
In: Planetary Science
The light speed limitation only restricts anything that can transmit information from one place to another, such as you could do with light (e.g. radio waves).
If you aimed a laser pointer at a very distant screen, and then panned it across from point A to point B, the spot of light on the screen could conceivably appear to be going from point A to point B faster than the speed of light, but it can’t carry any information from point A to point B, so it’s not an issue for relativity.
Nothing is actually moving from one end of the universe to the other as a result of the expansion of space, so it’s not a situation that invokes relativity. Like the laser pointer, it’s just you looking at both moving points and ascribing some meaning to them
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