Age of the universe

[philra]

If the universe is 14 billion years old and the big bang occurred at a singularity. How come we are now seeing light from stars and galaxies that has taken 14 billion years to reach us. I know that the current laws of physics are considered not to apply in the short period after the big bang, but did the universe expand from nothing to 14 billion light years across in a very short period of time, thereby breaching phenomenally the speed of light?

[Old_Geezer]

As I understand it the creation of space is not subject to this limit to the velocity of mass, so sure, it expanded faster than light speed since it wasn't really moving, more space was being created across the universe.

[jake-the-peg]

Yes and no

Relativity applys to objects moving in the Universe there's no reason to think that it would apply to the expansion of the Universe itself.

This rapid expansion is called "inflation" many people were rather unhappy with it when Alan Guth first put it forward, but it answered a number of difficult observations.

Since then a number of rocks have been hurled at it and it's generally withstood them

Tieing it up with an explanation of Dark Energy would be a great accomplishment!

[beso]

Inflation is still a process devoid of any sensible explanation except that there is nothing else that better fits our observations of the nature of the Universe.

Similarly Dark Energy.

I do hope we work it out before I die.

[jomifl]

If the space containing the planets expanded (inflation)then the planets can have geot further from each other than appears possible according to relativity. Apart from a major cockup in assumptions about the distances of stars, the red shift or speed of light in other parts of the universe then it is the best explanation so far.

[scowie]

No. The universe is not actually expanding at all. The idea that it does comes from misinterpreting galactic redshifts as a doppler effect when they are actually a scattering effect. The galaxies are not generally receding from each other at all. Their light simply loses energy through it's interaction with the intergalactic medium... http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/hubble/index.html

If the universe was expanding quasars would show time dilation effects but they don't: http://phys.org/news190027752.html

This documentary may enlighten you:

[beso]

That is a very obscure hypothesis scowie.

If it held any merit it would be significant in mainstream astrophysics.

[scowie]

It is a lot less obscure than the expanding "space-time" hypothesis. It would certainly make the universe a lot less obscure.

[modeller]

If the light from the big bang reaching me took 14 billion years then what would be/been the situation in one billion years time or one billion years ago.

So ( ignoring any expansion of the universe. ) if our distance to the big bang remains constant the light would have reached us
earlier in 13 billion years ( one billion years ago ) and therefore later in 15 billion years ( in one billion years time ).
This is becoming confusing . Let me see we are looking at an event which occurred 14 billion years ago. So what would we be looking at in one billion years time. It can't be the same event because that would have long passed. So we would be looking at the situation one billion years after the big bang.
So in 14 billion years time we would see what we are seeing now.
And in 15 billion years ??????
Can you clarify the situation ?