With the extreme expansion shortly after the big bang, wouldn't this expansion break the speed of light?
819931
It didn't matter back then.
940425
nothing expands faster than the speed of light
321995
If you consider the edge of the universe to be the furthest anything visible has traveled since the beginning then it would be where light has gone the furthest, and since light traveles at 299,792,458 metres per second, then the universe would be expanding in any one direction at 299,792,458 metres per second.
37917
this is somewhat similar to a question I answered realative to time travel. The short answer is no, there was never a time, nor will there ever be a time when matter (massive fermions) travel faster than light (massless bosons). This is because massive objects need energy to accelerate and regaurdless of how much energy was released in the big bang, it could not have been infinite, and that is what is required to move a massive particle faster than light. Light speed is not a derived measurement, it is a fundemental constant that is the same in all reference frames. Here's the cool exception though.....and this is how a theoretical warp drive would work..... the actual expansion of space itself might have been faster than light. There has never been a limit imposed on the speed at which space expands although because gravity is a result of the deformation of space and gravitons are the theoretical force carrier, it has been assumed that the expansion of space would occur only as fast as gravitons can travel....which is most likely light speed. One of the many postulates asserted by string theory is that gravitons may not be bound to our spatial demensions, that they might radiate through extra demensions (which would account for gravity's lack of strenght compared to the other forces). If this is the case that the gravitons travel through other demensions it is quite possible that within a given reference time, a graviton could pop into a superior demension and back into our at some other point and essentially beat light to some defined location.\n\nI know thats a little confusing.....but its fun to think about.
341014
You are right!  If the universe were infinitely old, the universe would be very bright.  However, early after the big bang, there was a period called "inflation", during which the early universe expanded much faster than the speed of light-because of this, the majority of object were seperated prior to the universe becomine transparent (when the concentration of hydrogen dropped low enough that light could travel long distances).  Now, the far distant places are traveling away at nearly the speed of light, and there are large dark places which absorb light.
631597
Just one doubt about your  theory,how do you know that only one big bang has taken place as you say that a second one is coming up???And tell me how you would accelerate something to the speed of light as the mass would become infinite.\nAnd according to your theory the total energy in the universe will go on increasing.You are stuck in a viscious circle!!!
351358
The first answerer is right about the mass increase.  As a mass approaches the speed of light, one of the effects is that the more energy you provide it in order to increase its velocity, the more the mass increases, according to Einstein's famous formula E=mc^2.\n\nThe speed of light is the absolute limit for velocity.  A mass can approach closer and closer to this speed, but can never surpass it.  So, to answer your question, mankind can and likely will build spaceships which can go significantly faster than the present-day ones can, but we will never be able to travel at the speed of light.
187984
No one knows.  The universe is expanding at such an incredible rate that we'll never reach anywhere near the end of the universe and even if we could travel there at the speed of light we'd die of old age before getting anywhere near the end.
644598
The rate of expansion of the universe is 70 km/sec/megaparsec. This equates to about a seven percent expansion each billion years. So, if an object is 25 billion light years away from us now, then in a billion years it will be 26.75 billion light years away. In this sense, it is receding away from us faster that the speed of light. A light beam leaving there now and coming straight at us is still getting further and further away from us. In this sense, the universe is expanding faster than light. Even though the rate of expansion is incredibly slow, it ends up equating to a lot of distance because of the sheer size of the universe.
1022881
Hi Itsverystrange\n\nIt is actually true that distant galaxies can (and are) travelling away from us at apparently greater than the speed of light.  Any galaxies outside our Hubble volume (r = c/H) are apparently receding from us at greater than c - this is why they're outside our past light cone.  \n\nThere's no conflict with special relativity here because SRT is a strictly local theory.  The coordinate system itself is doing the expanding, the galaxies aren't moving with respect to their local coordinates.\n\nHope this helps!\nThe Chicken
989387
The only thing that can travel at the speed of light is light. So basically yes.
364291
No, because according to Einstein's equations, to accelerate anything towards the speed of light would require more energy than exists in the universe (after converting all matter to energy).\n\nThere is a theoretical particle that never goes slower than the speed of light, but it has not been experimentally proven. They're called tachyons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light
563154
There are things that can move faster than the speed of light, but they can't carry information faster than the speeed of light.  For example if you shine a spotlight on a distant mountain and then spin the light around so that the spot moves really fast you can easily get a situation where that spot of light goes faster than the speed of light.\n\nBut I think you were referring to particles that move faster than light maybe?  It was conjectured that a particle called a "tachyon" could go faster than light.  But these particles have never been detected, although serious efforts have been made to do so.  \n\nIn the real world if you keep adding energy to a particle, its speed will keep increasing, but it can never hit the speed of light.  Then again, maybe there can be some mechanism whereby matter could be made to "jump" to a speed higher than the speed of light without ever going *at* the speed of light?  I think nobody knows a way to do this, and it may also be impossible.  New physics would need to be discovered!
355298
from what scientists gather, the universe appears to be symmetrical on all sides when viewed from earth. this conclusion was obtained when they found out that cosmic radiation was equal and never varied more than one in ten million parts when measured from any direction in space. \n\nAlso, the distances to the stars in all directions appear to be more or less equal. So that makes the universe symmetrical from earth's perspective.\n\nI dont think we'll ever reach the edge of the universe, becoz u would hav to start travelling there at the start of the big bang, and nothing travels faster than light.\n\nnow try to answer my question on time.
411180
The universe is so large that light from some places which has been traveling towards us since the moment after the Big Bang still hasn't had time to reach us.  The universe is 13.7 billion years old.  That makes the observable universe 13.7 billion light years across.  Since a light year is nearly 6 trillion miles, the observable universe is larger than you can probably imagine.\n\nAlso, the universe is expanding at such a rate that light from its farthest reaches will never be able to get here.  Since you can never travel faster than light, there is no way anyone from Earth will ever be able to see if the universe ends.
366136
Not really - As it would travel at the speed of light (or the lack of) - but there would be a delay of a few picoseconds.....
1081007
Fun stuff, this gravity question. One of the leading hypotheses of the past was that the expansion of the universe would eventually slow, and gravity would then pull all mass back together, resulting in another singularity, and a recurrence of the big bang. \n\nRecent evidence says that this isn't happening. Instead, as the universe expands, the gravitational pull will approach zero. The consequence of this new hypothesis is that the universe will eventually spread itself into nothingness, and as the stars fade and run out of fuel, the universe itself will fade away into cold and darkness. Not that it's something we have to worry about anytime soon.