Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 3/18/2006

Question
Recently I was reading an article about how scientists are finding the "smoking gun" of the Big Bang. I get the whole concept of that, all matter was one point which exploded. But what I dont get was that in the article they were saying that when the explosion happened the matter was shot outwards at about 100 times the speed of light. If I remember correctly there is some law or theory that says matter cannot go faster then the speed of light because it becomes energy. So, if that is so then how does all this work?

Answer
Hi Marcus,
Actually as more and more people studied the Big bang concept, they thought why is the echo of the bang (the cosmic background radiation) so homogenous?
Why is there no large scale lumpiness to it?
Which one would expect out of a one pointed bang.

Some one then introduced the concept of the "inflationary universe"..where the bang actually happened simultaneously at more than obe point (a very very small area but NOT a point nevertheless), and that it inflated at many times the speed of light in its initial phases (for the first millionth of a second say).

So there you have it! The so-called holy cow, the limit C was non-existent in those epochs..no one knows why, buty the results are there for all to see.

Hope that suffices..
Jayen