RE: What Did Einstein Mean when He Said Space is Curved?
June 15, 2017 at 7:41 pm
(This post was last modified: June 15, 2017 at 7:52 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(June 14, 2017 at 3:10 pm)Jehanne Wrote:(June 13, 2017 at 5:47 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: another weirdness:
as we look out further and further, we infer enormous distances from here to the objects we are looking at, but note the further out we look, the further back in time we are seeing too, and then realize, for instance, if we look at 2 distinct objects out there, and measure a 60 degree angle between them, and a distance, let's say of 10 billion light years away from us for each, then they were not 10 billion light years from each, despite what it looks like from here. They are far closer to each other than us but it is the time factor skewing the geometry too.
And, of course, an object whose light is 10 billions years old is not 10 billion light years away. The Universe, even though it is 13.8 billion years old, has a radius of around 48.5 billion light years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
But I believe the path the light took is by definition 10 billion light years long.
?
