(David Jones) wrote in message . com...
Klaatu wrote in message ...
Universe 156 Billion Light-Years Wide

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ay_040524.html
"If you've ever wondered how big the universe is, you're not alone.
Astronomers have long pondered this, too, and they've had a hard time
figuring it out. Now an estimate has been made, and it's a whopper.

The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide."

Sorry I can't buy that. I read the article and I'm no Astrophysist
but... If the speed of light is a constant and the universe is some
13.5 billion years old... than the universe is expanding at a speed
which is faster than the speed of light (which I am told is an
impossibility).

Now I'm fine with that provided that the speed of light isn't the
constant that everyone makes it out to be.

Sorry don't get it...

In The bit we are in we can see only as far back as 13.5billion light
years, so we're "limited" to a bubble around us of roughly that
distance (in each direction), or roughkly speaking we can see about
18% of the universe if we assume a spherical shape. Apparently that
question of shape is very much up for grabs anyway, so the idea of a
'width' to the universe may be misleading.

Imagine being on a balloon surface that expands extremely quickly so
that light from one part, on the other side of the balloon, is quickly
'pushed' so far away that at the speed of light it simply cannot reach
us a 'mere' 13-14 billion years into the beginning of light. The
expansion itself need not break the speed limit of physical objects
(or does it, i don't think so though)

I've also read that the rate of expansion is increasing, so that
infact we can't even sit around and wait for this light to get to us,
all the stuff is being 'pushed' away outside of our horizon of view
and theoretically all we'll eventually be able to get light enough to
see is our local goup of galaxies.

http://www.phys.cwru.edu/~krauss/01ENDrev.html

That'll soon curtail any long term optimism you may have had!