Age of Universe: Is There an Alternate Perception?

[Holland]

I was wondering if, immediately following the expansion of the universe there might have been objects of matter with immense gravity like that of a black hole. For the observer on such an object that still exists, what would the age of the universe be?

You could substitue this with an object that formed 1 billion years after tbb. Wouldnt their observation be dramatically different yet equally valid?

 

[bcrowell]

The age of the universe as usually discussed is for an observer who is at rest relative to the average motion of the matter and radiation in the universe (the "Hubble flow"), and is in the context of homogeneous models, which wouldn't include any structure such as black holes, etc. Yes, you're right, different observers can measure different ages of the universe on their clocks. You can't be "on" a black hole, but an observer hovering just outside a black hole's event horizon would say that according to her clock, the universe is very young. There is no limit on how young the universe could be according to such an observer. The same applies to an observer moving at nearly the speed of light relative to the Hubble flow.

 

[Naty1]

...immediately following the expansion of the universe there might have been objects of matter with immense gravity like that of a black hole.

you mean right after inflation ended...Actually it is far more likely everything back then was rather uniform radiation...it has taken gravity some time to form black holes...but crowells's reply covers many circumstances nicely.

Observed time passes differently according to the observer's velocity and local gravitational potential. Only the speed of light is constant for all inertail observers; most everything else depends on the frame of reference used...observations, in general, are relative, one as equally valid as another.

 

[fromthefuture]

An observer on such an object would have traveled backwards in time and would look at the universe being younger when he comes out of the hole, as anything inside a black hole travels faster than light, because black holes are shortcuts through space.
But what I say is impossible when this happens, imagine a guy entering a black hole when the universe is x years old, when he comes back if he had traveled 2x years backward, were would he be?

 

[Naty1]

when he comes out of the hole,

Nothing "comes out"...according to our best understanding.

"as anything inside a black hole travels faster than light, because black holes are shortcuts through space..."

untrue.