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cisco kid
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I have recently been watching the series "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking" and I have a question (commence eye-rolling of anyone reading this). I don't think the series is supposed to be an educational tool necessarily, its more of a horizon expanding view of some high level topics with low level explanations. At any rate, Dr. Hawking stated something that I am having a hard time wrapping my head around. I understand that the laws of physics state that there is a maximum speed limit, which we call the speed of light. This particular episode is explaining the origins of the universe via the big bang. He states "by the time the cosmos was ten minutes old, it was already thousands of light years in diameter." My question is, how could the matter travel thousands of light years in ten minutes? Wouldn't it take thousands of years, if that is the maximum speed?? Obviously I'm missing something here...