Relative Expansion
This section contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed. |
The exponential expansion of the scale factor means that the physical distance between any two non-accelerating observers will eventually be growing faster than the speed of light. At this point those two observers will no longer be able to make contact. Therefore any observer in a de Sitter universe would see event horizons beyond which that observer can never see nor learn any information. If our universe is approaching a de Sitter universe then eventually we will not be able to observe any galaxies other than our own Milky Way (and any others in the gravitationally bound Local Group, assuming they were to somehow survive to that time without merging).
Read more about this topic: De Sitter Universe
Famous quotes containing the words relative and/or expansion:
“In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.”
—Barbara Tuchman (19121989)
“Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nations press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.”
—Herbert Hoover (18741964)