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Sorry if this is a repost, but I saw something on a science documentary show last night that completely surprised me. The show was on the Big Bang and evolution of the Universe, start to finish. It was on a show called Naked Science on one of the science channels on DTV, and it seems to do a pretty good job with science documentaries.
They were describing the very beginning of the Big Bang, and were in the sub-nanosecond post-bang timescale or so (I think) with the Universe about golf ball size, and the physicist being interviewed for that stage made the statement that the matter was traveling outward faster than the speed of light. I had to rewind the TiVo to be sure that I heard him correctly. How does this fit with SR and GR? Was spacetime so messed up at that early stage that the c speed limit didn't apply?
And then at the end of the show, they were going over the infinite expansion theory, and the physicist being interviewed for that stage talked about how all molecules will decay and fly apart, and he too said that at that stage, particles will accelerate past c. Is this a well-known theoretical phenomena?
The physicists that the show was using for the interviews throughout the show looked like some of the best in their fields, so I don't think they were blowing smoke. I just had never heard of any instances of real superluminal matter. Thanks for any info or clarification on this.
They were describing the very beginning of the Big Bang, and were in the sub-nanosecond post-bang timescale or so (I think) with the Universe about golf ball size, and the physicist being interviewed for that stage made the statement that the matter was traveling outward faster than the speed of light. I had to rewind the TiVo to be sure that I heard him correctly. How does this fit with SR and GR? Was spacetime so messed up at that early stage that the c speed limit didn't apply?
And then at the end of the show, they were going over the infinite expansion theory, and the physicist being interviewed for that stage talked about how all molecules will decay and fly apart, and he too said that at that stage, particles will accelerate past c. Is this a well-known theoretical phenomena?
The physicists that the show was using for the interviews throughout the show looked like some of the best in their fields, so I don't think they were blowing smoke. I just had never heard of any instances of real superluminal matter. Thanks for any info or clarification on this.