If the big bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, and the universe is 93 billion light years in diameter, how did the universe expand faster than light?
In: Physics
Imagine two cars accelerating in opposite directions from one another at equal speed. Imagine they both travel for one mile and then stop. The distance between the cars is now two miles. The speed at which the distance between the two cars increases is twice as fast as the speed of either car individually.
The same thing is happening with the Universe. It’s not that the matter itself is travelling faster than light; it’s that the matter at one end of the Universe is accelerating away from the matter at the opposite end faster than light itself can travel through space.
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