In the November/December 2015 edition of StarDate Magazine, I quote Merlin as follows, “Astronomers see the earliest galaxies as they looked about 13 billion years ago. Since the time when those galaxies emitted the light that astronomers now detect, though, space itself has expanded, so the galaxies are now 48 billion light-years away.” If those … Read more Is space expanding faster than the speed of light?
Can light travel without a carrier such as a gravitation field? Light does travel via a carrier, in the same way gravity does. If we think about light as a continuous phenomenon, this carrier is the electromagnetic field, just as gravity is “carried” by a gravitational field. If we think about light as a particle, then … Read more Immediately after the Big Bang, did light stop at the edge of the Universe?
Based on the 2001 WMAP results, the Universe is flat with a 0.4% margin of error. But what exactly are the chances of the Universe being finite but unbounded? I know it’s an unanswered question in cosmology, but is there any estimate? The short answer to this question is that the Universe cannot be both flat and … Read more How likely is it that the Universe is closed, rather than flat?
In the November issue of Scientific American, there is an article on the Dark Energy Survey, “Seeing in the Dark.” How is this survey similar to – or different – from HET-DEX (besides being in Chile instead of Ft Davis)? As the Scientific American article states, the five-year Dark Energy Survey (DES) will cover 5000 square degrees … Read more How is HETDEX different from other dark energy surveys?
If a clock could survive in a black hole, would time stand still inside the black hole? What would space-time be like? The answer is kind of boring since we do not have physics to describe the inside of black holes, the official answer is “we don’t know”. We can speculate given what happens right … Read more Does time stand still inside a black hole?
Does the speed of light increase as it nears the event horizon due to the influence of a black hole’s gravitational pull? The short answer is no, the speed of light is always the same. To explore the subtle aspects of this question, we will consider it in the context of Albert Einstein’s general theory of … Read more Does light accelerate when approaching the edge of a black hole?
Does the degenerate matter inside a black hole have a temperature, or is it so compact it’s functionally at absolute zero? Also, if event horizon scales with mass, does matter inside the event horizon have a specifiable density? Thanks for a very intriguing question. The basic answer is that no one knows and that it … Read more Does the matter inside a black hole have temperature and density?