When did time begin, and how big is the universe?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/universe/howbig.html
Some things to ponder:
If our deepest views of the farthest galaxies in the known universe are 13.7 billion light years distant - it took 13.7 billion years for that light to reach our telescopes. So:
1) How long did it actually take for those most distant galaxies to travel outward to that point? (Considering that those galaxies have been traveling away at speeds far less than that of the speed of light.)
2) Wouldn't those most distant galaxies actually be, if we could observe/detect them in real time, a great deal farther away at this very time? (Likely far, far greater, by many magnitudes?)
3) Even if they had been traveling outward at the speed of light all this time, wouldn't that make them 27.4 billion actual light years distant? In all directions?
4) Confronting the reality that the light from those most distant galaxies radiates outward in all directions equally, what of the light traveling from these galaxies outward - in the opposite direction - further into the abyss? Could that light be an additional 13.7 billions years distant? Could there be a point at which it stops? At what boundry?
5) If we could magically transport ourselves to 13.7 billion light years beyond those most distant galaxies and observe backwards, what would we see? Extreme optical blueshift?
6) And finally, with the diameter of the known universe to be around 157 billion light years across, how did matter expand to that breadth in a mere13.7 billion years, (the supposed age of the universe), when the universe's speed limit for everything is limited to the speed of light?
By the way, does anyone have a truly killer spaghetti recipe' made with ground chuck?