[Darth Reagan]

Here's my question. Assuming that the farthest thing away from us is 14 billion light years distant, and the universe is 15 billion years old, then how fast do stars and other matter have to travel to get that far away? If this object that's 14 billion ly away from us is 7 billion light years from the originating point of the Big Bang, then that matter had to travel at almost half the speed of light to get there. Of course, I'm assuming that this is the maximum distance of any object from us, and I'm not sure that's the case

I've never seen this addressed...maybe my math and assumptions are faulty. Any help?

[Darth Reagan]

Paging. I suspect you may know the answer to my question above.....

[VadeRetro]

If this object that's 14 billion ly away from us is 7 billion light years from the originating point of the Big Bang, then that matter had to travel at almost half the speed of light to get there.

The whole universe was contained in the Big Bang. It's not like the debris of an explosion expanding through space, rushing away from some central point. The whole space was once confined to a small point. The whole space is expanding. The Big Bang is everywhere, which is why the Cosmic Microwave Background comes from all over the sky.

[QueenCityAllan]

"And God said, 'Let there be light'"

'Nuff said.

[Consort]

I don't want to talk about it.

[Andy from Beaverton]

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

[jwalsh07]

Lanzetta also used images of nearby star fields as a yardstick for stellar density and intensity to conclude that about 90 percent of the light in the very early universe was not detected by the Hubble. When this missing light was factored into the three dimensional perspective, it showed that the peak of star formation came just 500 million years after the Big Bang and has been declining since

Is this what's known in scientific circles as the fudge factor?

[VRWC_minion]

And God said:

Be light.

[College Repub]

Age of the Universe

[elfman2]

Does anyone here know of the leading non-religious based hypothesis regarding what came before the Big Bang?

[JoJo the Clown]

Big Bang never made much sense to me. How do its advocates explain the non-uniformity of the universe? If all matter began with a singularity, how does the transformation from that state to an expanding universe (by "explosion") occur without perfect uniformity during the expansion? What accounts for the variation in the universe, and what accounts for the fact that the universe is mostly empty? The notion of a singularity makes no sense in that context.

[Arthur McGowan]

If you are looking at something you can't see, how do you know?

[callisto]

This is an artist's impression of how the very early universe (less than 1 billion years old) might have looked when it went through a voracious onset of star formation, converting primordial hydrogen into myriad stars at an unprecedented rate. Back then the sky would have looked markedly different from the sea of quiescent galaxies around us today. The sky is ablaze with primeval starburst galaxies; giant elliptical and spiral galaxies have yet to form. Within the starburst galaxies, bright knots of hot blue stars come and go like bursting fireworks shells. Regions of new starbirth glow intensely red under a torrent of ultraviolet radiation. The most massive stars self-detonate as supernovas, which explode across the sky like a string of firecrackers. A foreground starburst galaxy at lower right is sculpted with hot bubbles from supernova explosions and torrential stellar winds. Unlike today there is very little dust in these galaxies, because the heavier elements have not yet been cooked up through nucleosynthesis in stars. Recent analysis of Hubble Space Telescope deep sky images supports the theory that the first stars in the universe appeared in an abrupt eruption of star formation, rather than at a gradual pace. Painting Credit: Adolf Schaller for STScI

[ArGee]

``We are getting close to the epoch were we can not see at all,'' she said.

When that happens, I want pictures!

Shalom.

[RightWhale]

I've never seen this addressed...maybe my math and assumptions are faulty

The objects appear to be farther than their age would indicate assuming they are travelling through space. They are even farther in real time. It appears they have travelled faster than light to get to their present positions, but this does not count the expansion of space. This is not a problem for cosmologists because they make it all up as they go. Your math and assumptions may be faulty anyway.

[desertcry]

The discovery revealed in this report could have been discovered by pure intuition, requiring no services from the Hubble telescope, using the following intuitive reasoning: If all the hydrogen, and heliun(the main fuel for stars), were created during the BIG BANG, then it stands to reason that the universe was richest in hydrogen right after the BIG BANG. Thus the rate of star formation should be highest at this point in time. Over time, the hydrogen fuel starts to deplete, hence star formation should slow down, so what's the big surprise?

[Karl_Lembke]

bump

[waterstraat]

Here's my question. Assuming that the farthest thing away from us is 14 billion light years distant, and the universe is 15 billion years old, then how fast do stars and other matter have to travel to get that far away? If this object that's 14 billion ly away from us is 7 billion light years from the originating point of the Big Bang, then that matter had to travel at almost half the speed of light to get there. Of course, I'm assuming that this is the maximum distance of any object from us, and I'm not sure that's the case I got news for you. There are stars 14 billion years away from us in all directions, so it is 14 billion years away, not 7.

Furthermore, those stars that are 14 billion years away, are traveling at near the speed of light, so therefore, they are not 14 billion years away, they are 29 billion years away, making a current diameter of 58 billion light years.

The stars that we see that are 14 billion years away, were 14 billion years away, 14 billion years ago. They are now 29 billion years away.

Lastly, what we see that existed 14 billion years ago, is long gone, they no longer exist. No star lasts 29 billion years, or for that matter, no star lasts even 14 billion years. Everything we see out there, has long since burned out.