The key word there is "apparently".
The expansion of spacetime does not have a speed, rather it is the spacetime metric that changes in such a way that the distance between any two sets of spacetime coordinates gets larger. This is different from saying that the two points are speeding apart.
Inflation can be "faster than c" because it's rate is not determined by motion through space (hence no violation of relativity), but by the expansion of spacetime itself.
Fantastic! I bought two bots of the finest 14 yr old scotch at the Oban Distillery after visiting McDougal’s castle earlier in the day.
What time of yr is that pic from?
What time of yr is that pic from?
I have Today read 400 pages of Stephen Hawking's alleged Coffee-Table Book "On the Shoulders of Giants". A 1250 page Tome perfect for a two week Physicist's vacation in Scotland.
A short and gentle introduction to the 5 Chapters, followed by the Original Writings of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Einstein.
Taking it from the top, Copernicus said a Child of Ten can see the Earth goes round the Sun! It's obvious the World is round. How else to do you explain that that the further South you go, the more Southern Stars you see?
How do you explain the Round shadows in Eclipses? How do you explain that the Sun shines straight down a vertical well on certain days in the Tropics?
He was clear the Earth was a sphere rotating on an axis. Even the Greeks knew that. Then went on to show the Equinoxes precessed 1 degree per Century.
Seems Copernicus knew every star in the Sky. All 6,000 of them down to 6th. magnitude.
He quoted the example of the Constellation "Fluvius". Now I was scratching my head on that one. You have to go down to Italy to see the bottom Star, Achernar. Turns out we call it Eridanus "The River" these days.
Somewhere South of Orion. Of which he noted the top Star was "Nebulous".
He also stated that the World is made of tiny invisible Atoms. 1 is invisible, 2 or 3 quite hard to see. But a large clump clearly visible.
How did he know that? Briliance! Thing is, back in those days they didn't have Telescopes, Electron Microscopes or Large Hadron Colliders. Calculations were all a bit rough and ready, but he had already found Mathematical Errors in the theory of Epicycles. For further advance we must thank Mr. Galileo. Who was famous for throwing balls out of his window in the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And building telescopes to see the 4 moons of Jupiter. And imagine his Glee when a 1609 or thereabouts, a SuperNova challenged the orthodoxy of the unchanging Heavens.
In my next post, we learn that Galileo's favourite daughter was called Virginia. But renamed herself "Maria Celeste" in honour of her Father. Which has a literary resonance to me. I often wondered why that disastrous ship was called the Mary Celeste!
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The name translates as "Heavenly Mary".
Troubled by monetary problems, Galileo placed Virginia in the San Matteo convent shortly after her thirteenth birthday.
Virginia chose her religious name, Maria Celeste, in honour of the Virgin Mary and her father's love of astronomy.
The things you learn in this thread!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Celeste
EDIT: Sorry Steve, I may be stealing your thunder!
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