Okay... This implies the light was stretched along with the space, right? Because otherwise, the photons would just... Never reach here if space between us and the light expanded faster than c.
Correct. See...
How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
131–140 of 231 posts
Re: How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
#132> It's composition meant the star must have come into being before iron became commonplace. Hypothesis 1: the star formed in a way that did not involve or produce a lot of iron. Hypothesis 2: the star is older than the universe itself. Clearly , hypothesis 2 is the more likely.
3 our estimate of the age of the universe or of these stars need to be improved.
Re: How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
#133GN-z11 is a galaxy that's 32 billion light years away. Here's the note from wikipedia: At first glance, the distance of 32 billion light-years (9.8 billion parsecs) might seem impossibly far away in a Universe that is only 13.8 billion (short scale) years old, where a light-year is the distance light travels in a year, and where nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. However, because of the expansion of t…
This still doesn’t add up. For one, now it’s saying that when the universe was .4 billion years old we were already 2.6 billion light years apart, so now you have to explain that first.
Re: How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
#134Start over space theories all over again. Lets not build our assumptions on previous generation findings.
Only if we take path of how the previous geniuses went through we will have a flawless exploration. Instead of doing that, if we work on someone else's work, its like eating someone else's recipie and trying to remake the tase of it without understanding the ingredients in it.
Re: How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quark Gluon Plasma (observed at the RHIC), at really early in the universe there was too much temperature and pressure to have stars or even atoms. At least that's my understanding.
That's great, but The Big Bang is more or less chasing a status as the canonical answer to an intensely desirable question. It wants to be the answer, yet the facts don't really align with the premise of the question. We just shoe horn a litter of observations into some post-hoc rationale for how the universe "began" and then we retcon anything that doesn't make sense, when we think more deeply about it. It's fine to…
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Re: How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the above poster, but I want to understand. I have half-understood thoughts that conflict with each other. Any help showing where I misunderstand is appreciated, but this is probably a failure of my brain to be able to cope. * All space was contained in the big bang, so "everywhere simultaneously" makes sense from that perspective. * ...but the idea that space is expanding implies an outer "edge" (, which doesn't…
A less brain melting way to imagine the "expansion without edge" thing is the classic balloon system. Imagine your entire universe exists across the plain of a semi-deflated balloon and then someone slowly begins to blow it up. The "space" in your 2D world is expanding, but there are no edges.
Which leads to the follow up question: if you travel far enough in one direction do you end up where you started? (well, no, not if space expands faster than c).
Re: How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
#137Given the norm for question titles, the answer must be "It can't." Also simply based on what a universe is.
What we have are just different estimates for the age of our universe. And none of them involve simple measurement, obviously. So the challenge is finding the artifact(s) that generate the disagreement.
Re: How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm bit confused. Regardless of expansion, these objects are right now > 13.8B ly away. So the light from them still needs that much time to get here. If light from them has arrived sooner, we would see less redshift and perceive them as a closer. No?
The light we see is from when the galaxy was closer. As the light left the galaxy and travelled towards us, the universe expanded "between" the photons and the galaxy.
And how do we know that now the galaxy is much further away? Just by the red shift of the light emitted over time?
Re: How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you ELI5 - how can we observe something 93 billion light years away, if the light has only been traveling for 13.8B years? Shouldnt the "observable" distance be the the age of the universe?
Your intuition that there is an limited observable distance because is correct. But because of the expansion, that limit is bigger than "speed_of_light * age of universe" . I don't know enough General Relativity to give a solid explanation. But here is a rough over-simplification: Imagine you've spent the last 5 seconds blowing up a balloon, but there is an ant walking on that balloon, starting from a marked spot. In…
If space works as a balloon then the growth happens in all the volume of the universe (not just on the “boundary”). Is that how it works? Doesn’t that imply that we are getting “bigger”?
Re: How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
The light we see is from when the galaxy was closer. As the light left the galaxy and travelled towards us, the universe expanded "between" the photons and the galaxy.
And how do we know that now the galaxy is much further away? Just by the red shift of the light emitted over time?
As far as I understand, yes. The red shift of the light can be measured, which tells us for how long the light has traveled.