On a cruise a few years ago, after an onboard lecture by an astrophysics professor, I asked what I thought was an easy question for somebody in the field to answer:
If nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
If the age of the Universe is 13.8 billion years old.
How come the size of the observable Universe was over 42 billion light years across (his quote)?
Why is it not less than the radius of 13.8 billion light years, i.e. a maximum of 27.6 billion light years across.
He couldn't answer and went back to his cabin to research the answer. A couple of days later, he finds me in a bar onboard and starts to give me a meaningless gibberish, clearly made up answer.
When I got home, I thought about it and researched it deeply. After a couple of hours of Google searching (this was before to ChatGPT existed), I came to the conclusion it was because at the very beginning of the Universe, time had yet to come into existence and most of the expansion happened before particles came into being.
mike
npub1aq…c237n
2026-01-13 12:06:04 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…tmr9
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npub1aqakd28d95muqlg6h6nwrvqq5925n354prayckr424k49vzjds4s0c237nSeen on
wss://relay.damus.ioPublished at
2026-01-13 12:06:04 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "On a cruise a few years ago, after an onboard lecture by an astrophysics professor, I asked what I thought was an easy question for somebody in the field to answer:\n\nIf nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.\nIf the age of the Universe is 13.8 billion years old.\n\nHow come the size of the observable Universe was over 42 billion light years across (his quote)?\n\nWhy is it not less than the radius of 13.8 billion light years, i.e. a maximum of 27.6 billion light years across.\n\nHe couldn't answer and went back to his cabin to research the answer. A couple of days later, he finds me in a bar onboard and starts to give me a meaningless gibberish, clearly made up answer.\n\nWhen I got home, I thought about it and researched it deeply. After a couple of hours of Google searching (this was before to ChatGPT existed), I came to the conclusion it was because at the very beginning of the Universe, time had yet to come into existence and most of the expansion happened before particles came into being.",
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