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Wednesday, May 28, 2025

The Big Bang and speed of light

The Big Bang

The concept of the Big Bang does not involve matter moving through space faster than the speed of light in the way you might be imagining. It's a common misconception that the galaxies are moving away from a central point in space, propelled by some kind of explosion. Instead, the expansion of the universe itself is responsible for the increasing distance between galaxies.

The key point to understand is that during the Big Bang, the universe itself expanded, and it continues to expand. The idea is not that galaxies are moving through space away from a centre, but rather that the space between galaxies is expanding. This expansion is not limited by the speed of light because it's a property of space itself, not matter moving through space.

The metric expansion of space is a fundamental aspect of the current understanding of cosmology. It means that the universe as a whole is getting larger, and as a result, galaxies that are far apart are moving away from each other. The rate of this expansion is described by the Hubble constant.

Objects within galaxies, such as stars and planets, are not moving faster than the speed of light relative to each other due to this expansion. The restriction that nothing can move through space faster than the speed of light applies to objects within space, not to the expansion of space itself.

It's important to note that while galaxies are moving away from each other on cosmological scales, there are other processes, such as gravity, that can cause galaxies to come closer together on smaller scales. The large-scale expansion of the universe and the local dynamics of galaxies are different aspects of cosmic evolution.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model

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