Expert: Steve Nelson - 5/6/2009

Question
Dear Sir. I watched a documentary recently which explained the reason why we see background radiation informally in all directions. (Evidence from WMAP) It stated that in the first second the universe actually expanded faster than light. Is this now a recognized fact? The documentary stated that the universe was very small at the time but doesn't this violate physics? Thank you

Answer
Be careful with the word "fact."  It's misleading, and generally misused when dealing with physics theory.  A "fact" is a statement which can be checked and either confirmed or denied.  We obviously can't check back billions of years.

However, inflation is the state of the art in big bang theory.  It is widely recognized and does not violate physics because we're not talking about a physical object moving faster than the speed of light *through* space...we're talking about the space itself expanding.  Imagine a room full of chairs expanding but with the same number of chairs.  The chairs would get further apart, but stay "where they were" but move relative to one another because the space was expanding.  It's kinda like that.