- #1
grmnsplx
- 38
- 0
The other day I read a rencent article in Scientific American entitled "The End of Cosmology." I have a simple question that I hope someone can clarify for me.
Let me first give a brief summary and my understanding of the article. In every direction the universe is expanding, and this expansion is accelerating.
Accelerating so much so that at some point, galaxies will be flying away from us at the speed of light and beyond. Therefore, we will not be able to see them. Large portions of the universe will disappear. The point of the article is that we are lucky enough to exist in the only epoch where we can observe and expanding universe and find evidence of a big bang.
Anyway, on to my question. I thought that the theory of Special Relativity tells us that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Am I missing something, or do the observations mentioned in the article contradict this theory?
Oh, here, I found the article on the web. Here is he link.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-end-of-cosmology
Let me first give a brief summary and my understanding of the article. In every direction the universe is expanding, and this expansion is accelerating.
Accelerating so much so that at some point, galaxies will be flying away from us at the speed of light and beyond. Therefore, we will not be able to see them. Large portions of the universe will disappear. The point of the article is that we are lucky enough to exist in the only epoch where we can observe and expanding universe and find evidence of a big bang.
Anyway, on to my question. I thought that the theory of Special Relativity tells us that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Am I missing something, or do the observations mentioned in the article contradict this theory?
Oh, here, I found the article on the web. Here is he link.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-end-of-cosmology