Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 2/27/2005

Question
Hi Jayendra Upadhye,

I was reading about the Gigantic Energy Burst we had sometime last week and came across an article about galaxies receding faster than light and that after they recede beyond a cosmic event horizon, as explained by the Hubble distance, the light given off by these receding galaxies will never be seen by people on Earth, because the receding galaxies are receding faster than light.  If there were people in those receding galaxies they will never be able to see light coming from Earth because our galaxy is receding faster than light with respect to the their galaxy.  The galaxy containing Earth is also receding at a speed faster than light, correct?

Angel

Answer
Hi Angel,
There are pages on the web saying what you are saying.
example:- http://www.regenerating-universe.org/18)_The_real_age_of_universe.htm

But! Nothing can circumvent the limitation imposed on movement thru space, that the speed of motion shall not exceed 300,000 km/sec.

To my knowledge and understanding, what happens is..
1 - As the recession rate increases, the red shift increases.
2 - All frequencies of visible light perforce then "migrate" into the infra-red.
3 - From there, as the distance increases even further, this light "migrates to the microwave region..until the uniform microwave of the COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND ..the echo of the big bang..swamps it!
4 That would mean that any "older light" of higher intensity than the CMB, but lower frequency would represent the light coming from the very outer reaches of the "observable universe".
5 - From even further out if at all anything is there, that light would be of even lower frequencies approaching "couple of hretz" or "100s of hertz"!

But all the time, while this is happening, neither we nor the source of that distant light will exceed the speed of light.

This should actually result in our observing a sort of "crowding effect" at this visual horizon of the universe, where nothing can ever cross it but only become more and more red shifed!

This however has not been corroborated for me by any observation anywhere on the web.

So i have to just get by with the "possibility" of that happening!

This is where i am treading the thin edge of "actual fact" and "pet theory"!

But yes, as per the "given gospel" ..you are right! :)

Jayen