Science & Technology

Entire galaxies seemingly defy physics by traveling faster than the speed of light

Fraser Cain
Universe Today
Mon, 12 Oct 2015 00:00 UTC

How can galaxies be traveling faster than the speed of light when nothing can travel faster than light? Warp speed galaxies come up when I talk about the expansion of the Universe. Perhaps it's dark energy acceleration, or the earliest inflationary period of the Universe when EVERYTHING expanded faster than the speed of light.

Imagine our expanding Universe. It's not an explosion from a specific place, with galaxies hurtling out like cosmic jetsam. It's an expansion of space. There's no center, and the Universe isn't expanding into anything.

I'd suggested that this is a terribly oversimplified model for our Universe expanding. Unfortunately, it's also terribly convenient. I can steal it from my children whenever I want.

Imagine you're this node here, and as the toy expands, you see all these other nodes moving away from you. And if you were to move to any other node, you'd see all the other nodes moving away from you. Here's the interesting part, these nodes over here, twice as far away as the closer ones, appear to move more quickly away from you. The further out the node is, the faster it appears to be moving away from you.

This is our freaky friend, the Hubble Constant, the idea that for every megaparsec of distance between us and a distant galaxy, the speed separating them increases by about 71 kilometers per second.

Galaxies separated by 2 parsecs will increase their speed by 142 kilometers every second. If you run the mathatron, once you get out to 4,200 megaparsecs away, two galaxies will see each other traveling away faster than the speed of light.

How big Is that, is it larger than the Universe?

The first light ever, the cosmic microwave background radiation, is 46 billion light-years away from us in all directions. I did the math and 4,200 megaparsecs is a little over 13.7 billion light-years.There's mountains of room for objects to be more than 4,200 megaparsecs away from each other. Thanks Universe?!?

Most of the Universe we can see is already racing away at faster than the speed of light. So how it's possible to see the light from any galaxies moving faster than the speed of light. How can we even see the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation? Thanks Universe.

Light emitted by the galaxies is moving towards us, while the galaxy itself is traveling away from us, so the photons emitted by all the stars can still reach us. These wavelengths of light get all stretched out, and duckslide further into the red end of the spectrum, off to infrared, microwave, and even radio waves. Given time, the photons will be stretched so far that we won't be able to detect the galaxy at all.

In the distant future, all galaxies and radiation we see today will have faded away to be completely undetectable. Future astronomers will have no idea that there was ever a Big Bang, or that there are other galaxies outside the Milky Way. Thanks Universe.

I stand with Einstein when I say that nothing can move faster than light through space, but objects embedded in space can appear to expand faster than the speed of light depending on your perspective.

Reader Comments

Snowalker · 2015-10-14T01:40:04Z

When you extrapolate...

... a false assumption you get a highly complex theory that is false. Oh Frasier. You sound so sensible and trustworthy and yet you are clueless. The electric universe theory waits patiently for you to awaken to its reality. But don't rush into it too quickly. It could break you.

gerryhiles · 2015-10-14T03:36:52Z

Wrong paradigms.

OK I'll be blunt and deficient on data, but I thought a lot of this stuff through years ago and reached firm, but not ultimate conclusions which I'll try to lay out here as I toss out wrong (I think) paradigms, theories, etc..

1/ The Universe is in Steady State (infinite, no origin, no Big Bang, no expansion). Consider our galaxy and all others to be analogous with an ancient and vast forest wherein, at any given location, a tree (star) dies and gets recycled eventually as a local event of seeming importance to local other vegetation and dependent animals. But elsewhere another tree grows and, overall the forest has not changed one iota.

BTW "Universe" precisely means/refers to EVERYTHING, all that is, all-encompassing. "alternative universe", "multiverse", etc. are Orwellian nonsense or, like Humpty-Dumpty said, "Whenever I use a word it means anything I want it to mean." Science and technology are not possible with this attitude.

2/ We are situated in the outer rim of a rotating spiral galaxy and travelling VERY fast - I can't recall the velocity I saw calculated years ago - so when we observe some other galaxy it appears that we are travelling towards, or away from it - just like being on a merry-go-round and looking towards or away from the surrounding scenery and, of course, we are not really travelling anywhere relative to either our galaxy or others. It just appears that way and accounts for observed blue or red shifts.

Thought experiment (as per Einstein): Imagine a machine gun firing at a target moving either towards or away from the gun at significant speeds, e.g. 500kph, so that the bullets (photons) arrive with greater FREQUENCY and impact on an approaching target, but the opposite on a receding one of course.
The speed of the bullets - say 1500kph is constant - but the effects are different.
Whether on not anything could travel faster than the speed of light I don't know, but I doubt it if the Universe is in Steady State and has always, overall, been as it is now.
Our observations only go back a few millennia, but all of the evidence points to "fixed" stars and galaxies.

3/ There is no "age" of the Universe.
Estimated "age" relies on such dubious assumptions as estimating how long it takes for light to travel from the "furthermost galaxy on the edge of the Universe".
Snag!! With each improvement of telescopes, more distant galaxies are discovered, but rather than admit that the paradigm is wrong, 'experts' keep revising the "age" upwards.
Thought experiment:
If I could travel to the "furthermost galaxy", what would I see?
Looking back I would see our galaxy as "the most distant", but a myriad more in the other direction, not yet observed (if ever) from Earth.
BTW we still operate on an essentially geo-centric assumption and I think that this is really ego-centricity projected outward to contaminate our observations and theories.

4/ Einstein was radically wrong in positing "time" as a virtual medium in which "stuff happens".
He is said to have read Kant, but in that case he failed to understand that both "time" and "space" are essentially prime aspects of our consciousness and have no necessary existence beyond ourselves.
THIS is a hard one, but Newton expressed the concept by saying that though we can never directly know the Universe, we somehow possess inner resources to gain knowledge.
Hume Expressed it as: "If it was not for our passions and emotions, we could have no idea of a substance." And he illustrated this by reference to "heat" (which does not exist-in-itself) which we experience as a sensation/feeling and of a 'something' outside of ourselves. But it is no more real than "time" as ordinarily imagined, it is rather the vibration frequency of atoms and molecules impacting on our receptors ... and "time" is similar because we are actually experiencing the frequency or periodicity of events within or around us.
Thus when busy and engrossed "time flies", but this has NO effect on the periodicity of a clock, for instance.
Einstein confused the necessarily subjective experience of time-as-consciousness with inanimate objects having their own rhythm/periodicity/frequency of occurrence, compared with other events.

5/ Consider a pendulum (though it could be anything having a regular oscillation, for instance a quartz crystal) at rest/travelling at a constant speed.
Einstein imagined being on a train and so will I. So imagine a pendulum clock on a carriage wall, ticking away regularly when the train is in the station, but then this high speed train rapidly accelerates and the pendulum either slows or stops completely due to inertial forces.
Of course "time" has not stopped for anything else. The beat goes on for all else not subject to acceleration, or deceleration.
This is where things get interesting, but I'll leave you dangling to work out for yourself ... well I have not completed over forty years of reflection, have not reached any "ultimate conclusions" and probably never will.

davidcarswell · 2015-10-14T21:39:01Z

1. One of the requirements of an infinite universe though while maybe possible though unlikely is that an infinite universe with its infinite space and possibilities means there are an infinite you speaking all possible languages of the universe wearing infinite possible styles in all infinite combination, an infinite you eating chicken on all possible life sustaining planets where in an infinite planets called earth where an infinite amount speak only English. This is a requirement of an infinite paradigm thus a paradox. People fail to understand what ludicrous results of infinity mean when applied to the universe. While possible I'd rather side with a finite as the ramifications could mean that the universe would be extremely completely overpopulated and overrun with everything.

2. Sorry to say that yes we do consider the our movement and it is calculated into the blue and redshift.

Relates to more than one numbered points:
You are not understanding the flattening or compression (flatness) of matter at speed. The faster - the flatter or shorter it becomes. The faster an object goes the slower time passes. Thankfully this is proven as the clocks on satellites have to be calibrated (example: gps proved this when satellites were incapable of accuracy without adjustment). And there have been multitudes of precise lab setting experiments and real world experiments that have proven time and time again this to be true.

Heat is real. Short answer is that it is the expression of energy and/or the excitation of subatomic particles. And yes it can be felt. And no it's not just a perception that requires human senses to be real. Heat is very real. Cold is lack of energy. The less energy or excitation the colder. Absolute zero = no energy and quite impossible to create in a lab cause the act of removing cold requires energy and thus creates heat. We can get close but not quite to zero.

I am studying astrophysics at Berkeley. Though I am a skeptic it amazes me when I see people that are so skeptical that everything becomes subjected to it to the point that they appear obtuse and often fall under idiocy.

While I am not so sure the Big Bang necessarily happened I can say that if not something similar likely did as evidence does point in that direction and this article explains why. Galaxies are moving faster than light (perceptively) at great distance and space is definitely expanding (or something akin). Fortunately there are some things we do just know be dammed the skeptics.

pavlink · 2015-10-14T18:34:40Z

How many devils can dance on the head of a pin?

AOC · 2015-10-16T02:21:50Z

hiles and carswell

Thanks for the awesome thought provoking commentary! Great stuff!

gerryhiles · 2015-10-16T04:55:09Z

Thanks AOC.

I'd just like to add some comments on carswell's contribution.

1/ He tries to partly negate my assertion of infinity by introducing "infinite possibilities", but that is NOT what I am saying. Possibilities are obviously limited by the 90-odd number of known elements and Newton's "Laws" (I'll duck discussion of quantum physics).
Einstein said that God does not play dice with the Universe, but that is both right and wrong (not that I believe in a god per se).
Liken this to a game of Lotto, with even only 45 numbers in play.
The possibility of getting a winning combination is rare, but not impossible.
OK taking the Kant-Laplace model as agreed.
When a primal star explodes, it scatters the elements far and wide and, though the number of possible combinations are immense, they are NOT infinite. Planets form from the debris in ways determined by the finite numbers of elements and gravitational "laws".
This can go on forever at various locations.
Locations are infinite, but particular events are not ... which is why we observe similar galaxies to our own.

2/ Carswell apparently does not understand the difference between speed and acceleration, but this is very simple, so I do not know how he fails to understand, e.g. that acceleration has the same effect as gravity, whatever gravity actually is

gerryhiles · 2015-10-16T06:48:51Z

Infinity?

Many years ago I was struck by the difference between Eastern and Western attitudes.

In the East there are, or were, attitudes of a continuity; such as re-birth and karma.

I was struck by the difference as a cultural outcome.

Whereas in the West things changed all the while, invasions and wars, in the East there was relative stability, such as China and India having maintained civilizations for 2-3000 years, therefore religions in the West and East were radically different.

HashAttack2 · 2015-10-16T09:01:11Z

If you accept karma then you really cannot go around killing people and thinking it is ok to do so

With our Western religions killing is just a sin on the same level of sloth and God rewards people for killing others

My brother-in-law - a wonderful man - went through this stage of living in a constant dream world not long before my sister-in-law had to realize...

Eventide

Absolutely no money laundering going on here....

DeliciousTears

Standup comedy. He's got a substantial repertoire of Russky jokes.

boli

Pretty much my whole life, I've told people overseas that I'm not "American", I'm from Texas, and that Texas is not actually part of the U.S....

boli

Insurance based on innuendo, great policy.

JTF Truth

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