universe 156 billion light years

space.com...

this will only the beg the question of what's outside.

great find, i have personally lost my interest in astronomy couple of weeks before, but now it is back. Thank you.

Sruf

Yeah, pretty interesting stuff. I've been reading a lot about the idea that this may be one of countless universes out there and this is beginning to make a lot of sense to me.

I'm really hoping that we can someday achieve technology that will allow us to see back to the big bang or as close as possible. That day could have as profound affect on us as first contact.

Thanks for the link!

Did you understand the part where they talked about not being able to see our part? If so, could you explain?

Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbor, is 4.3 lightyears away. Considering how big a galaxy is, then groups of galaxies, then the HUGE gulfs in between them, that doesn't sound really big enough to me. [don't get me wrong, space is frighteningly large as far as i am concerned]. That's [only?] about 36 billion times the distance to our nearest neighbor. Not that the Universe has to conform to any desires or pre-conceptions that I may have.

Just my opinion.
.

Maybe you skimmed through the passage, but it is just an estimate. For all we know they could be million of lightyears in between the point which could have be shrunken for whatever reason.

Old information. This was already posted some time ago. You should use search feature to reduce reposts and rehash of old news. ATS has a great set of search features to prevent this sort of reposting .

Same post long time ago

I don't think it would be possible. Because until the universe was 100 000 years old, light was confined into the matter that emitted it and it could not go anywhere. So if we try to look back the farthest in time using redshifts, we hit the wall of cosmic microwave background.

More explained here:
curious.astro.cornell.edu...
curious.astro.cornell.edu...
More about CMB:
map.gsfc.nasa.gov...

Honestly, I haven't seen a topic posted yet that someone didn't come along and say it was old news. I get tired of doing a search evertime I see a thread or want to start one and sometimes its cool to have a new thread for an old subject. It gets new members excited about the boards and allows for new discussions.

I get a bit intimidated trying to respond to thread that has 500 responses, you have to read all of the responses and then decide whether anyone is going to even going to be interested in what you have to say or even want to converse with you on a subject they've passed on a long time ago.

I think older members should just ignore threads they've visisted before and let others post fresh. Just a thought.

[edit on 7-9-2004 by Weller]

As Weller said, new comers want to start a topic again rather than just going to search and reading those dead replies, because if you start a new thread it is much more interesting.

I think people should just ignore them if the time difference between them is more than 3 months, which I think applies in this case.

so far away from my house NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well keep in mind that we don't even have the technology to send human out of the solar system (not counting UFO theory). i think it's pretty damn intimidating to know that the universe it's somewhat at least this size. and we will never EVER reach that kind of distance within our lifetime, or for any human for that matter.

Thats exactly what I was thinking. Considering that there are what - hundreds of millions, if not billions - of stars in the milky way alone, each at the veryleast several light years away from each other, then there is a proportionally huge gap between each galaxy, of which there are several billion (if my memory serves me right) this seems like much to small a number.

Hi All,

Has anyone contemplated that as the expansion of the universe is increasing, what happens when the expansion speed equals that of the speed of light??

Tim.

Hi Tim,
You are right that the expansion of the universe is increasing, however I don't think it would reach the speed of light ever. The present rate of expansion is around 71 km/sec/Mpc (1 Mpc=3.26LY).

Also according to the latest WMAP data, the universe has a flat geometry and therefore, the universe will expand forever (reaching a max rate and then slowing down forever).

The rate of expansion depends on the nature of the mysterious dark energy that seems to repel gravity! So, these results of WMAP are capable of changes if dark energy's nature changes with time.

However, during the inflation period in the evolution of our universe, it grew to the factor of about 10^60 in less than 10^(-30) seconds. That's for sure was greater than the speed of light!

the string theory also says the universe has a size too....its the size of the membrane or universe we are in...a membrane is a string stretched soooo large that when 2 collide it creates a "big bang" and with that much energy it had to go somewhere and thats how the universe was made.....there are parallel universes too....but thats just more membranes

Does it say anything about the beginning or end of the universe?

I mean if all those universes collide at one time and create a huge bang, wouldn't that some how lead to something I guess?

Lead to something
A questoin have bugged me for a while.. How old are the existence(total existence)? if it even did not exist for some time. our univers marble are joust 1 of millions/billions? Infinity? who knows. How old are the existence? Infinity old.

the only problem with string theory is how old is the universe.....but i would say that after thay collide again our universe would grow bigger and expand more......membranes are strings that are stretched....so i would say the universe is infinite years old