The problem of two photons
Nothing else can travel faster than light. And only particles that can reach that speed in the straight universe are photons. So when we are thinking about the case where two photons are going to different ways, we must realize that if we would sit on another photon, we cannot get any observation from a photon that travels away from us.
Because the speed of light is cosmic constant we would not get the observations of the photons that are coming after us either. So as you see there are two ways to say the same thing. And the answer depends on the way how we describe the edge of the universe.
If we want to answer the question: "Does the universe expand faster than light? " We should describe the edge of the universe.
The edge of the universe can describe as:
1) The edge of the most out gas atoms in the universe, when the speed of expanding follows the Hubble law.
2) The point where the first photons that are left from the Big Bang are reached.
So if we are using photons as describing the edge of the universe the speed of expansion is the speed of light. And the speed of photons that are traveling in the opposite direction is 2X the speed of photons because they are traveling in opposite directions. But the photons themselves cannot cross the speed of light.
The answer is yes and no at the same time. If we are thinking that the edge of the universe is at the point that the first photons that are released in the Big Bang are reaching we might think that the escaping speed between those photons is 2X the speed of the light. But the fact is that the photon itself doesn't cross the speed of light. We can answer the question about the speed of the expanding universe in two ways.
We can say that the expanding speed of the universe is the Hubble Constant is now 69.8+(1.9−1.9) (km/s)/Mpc ((m/s)/Megaparsec), what is the speed of the gas. Or the universe can expand with the speed of light in every direction if we are thinking that the edge of the universe is the point, where the first photons from the Big Bang have reach. So the diverge speed of photons that are traveling to opposite directions is 2X speed of photons. But they cannot cross that speed.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law
https://curiosityanddarkmatter.home.blog/2021/01/03/the-problem-of-two-photons/
Comments
Post a Comment