Phys12 said:
But wouldn't the emitter need to have been moving at the speed of light for it to have reached a distance of twice the distance from the Earth to the point when it first emitted the light that was observed on earth?
Sure. That's not an issue, though. If you don't see how, check out that 'ant on a rubber rope' article on Wikipedia that was mentioned.
Keep in mind, that the regions from which we're presently receiving CMB have never been receding at velocities lower than c. And yet, we can observe it just fine.
Phys12 said:
By non-convoluted, you mean no expansion/contraction, right?
By convoluted I meant that one could concoct a model that is in turns expanding and contracting in just the right way to place the emitter exactly where it would be if the universe were static (no expansion/contraction). The non-convoluted one would be just static.
Phys12 said:
To clarify, dark energy here is used only to indicate an accelerated expansion of the universe with recession velocity >c, right? Also, even if a universe is dominated by dark energy, the horizon would still be further back than the Hubble sphere, right?
With dark energy one gets accelerated expansion, yes. But one doesn't need accelerated expansion to get recession velocities higher than c. A steady, or even decelerated, expansion will produce such recession velocities at sufficiently large distances, as indicated by the Hubble law: ##V=H_0 d##. Everything further away than ##d_h=c/H_0## is receding faster than light. ##d_h## is the radius of the Hubble sphere (or just Hubble radius).
Now, in a universe without dark energy, there is no event horizon, but the Hubble radius does exist.
In a universe with dark energy, but also non-negligible other stuff (matter, radiation) in it, the horizon exists and is further away than the Hubble radius.
In a universe with only dark energy in it (de Sitter universe), the event horizon is exactly where the Hubble radius is.
As our universe (assuming the LCDM model) expands, other kinds of energy will keep diluting towards negligible densities, so the horizon will get ever closer to the Hubble radius (but will only reach it asymptotically in infinite future).
Phys12 said:
Always? Would it not happen that when I see the photon emitted by the CMB at the EH, that will be the last photon that people on Earth will ever be able to detect?
That's right, but this photon will take forever to reach the observer. I.e., a once visible object will disappear from sight only after infinite time has passed. So the object is always visible (disregarding issues with faintness of the signal, etc.).
Phys12 said:
So we can see light from the CMB, from objects produced after the CMB, but not once they've crossed the EH and not anything that might have been created beyond the EH. Is that accurate?
Yes. By definition, anything beyond EH is forever unobservable. Just as with black holes.
But I have the impression you might still be thinking of those objects as somehow disappearing as they cross the EH. The horizon doesn't 'disappear' objects, it limits how much of the history of the emitter we will be able to see.
It might be better to think of events in space-time, instead of objects. E.g. there are points in space, comoving with the expansion, from which we can observe light as it was emitted over some limited time interval. From the point of view of a distant observer, this limited time interval is stretched to infinity. The points crossing the event horizon means the last moment in the history of this point in space that we may still observe.
So, e.g., taking the CMB. There is a set of points in space, from which the currently-observable CMB was emitted by the gas residing there early in the universe. Later in time, that gas will start to coalesce into proto-galaxies, which some humans in the far future might be able to observe. The formation processes will be seen as increasingly stretched in time, slower and dimmer. But no matter how long they wait, they'll never see a fully formed galaxy in those spots (say, at 5 billion years of age). All they'll ever get is an old image, progressively more and more frozen in time.
Looking at something closer-by, there will be more of its history that will be observable. So a galaxy currently at 20 Gly will eventually be observed as it reaches 5 billion years of age, but the moment it ages to 10 Gy will be forever unobservable.