this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
60 points (91.7% liked)
science
14061 readers
858 users here now
just science related topics. please contribute
note: clickbait sources/headlines aren't liked generally. I've posted crap sources and later deleted or edit to improve after complaints. whoops, sry
Rule 1) Be kind.
lemmy.world rules: https://mastodon.world/about
I don't screen everything, lrn2scroll
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"If the universe would just sit still, then light from a galaxy 33.8 billion light-years away would take 33.8 billion years to reach us, and that would be that. But, in the early 1900s, Edwin Hubble found that distant galaxies appeared to be receding away from each other, and the further apart they were, the faster they were going. In other words, the universe isn't static; it is expanding"
If the universe isn't 33.8 billion years old, how did that light make it here in 33.8 billion years?
Genuine question, I hope the article answers it. Bookmarking this for later while I return to writhing in bed recovering from a stomach bug...
The galaxy is 33 billion light years away now but the light started coming toward is when it was 13 billion light years away. The article is basically an introduction to this concept mentioned toward the end of the article:
"To avoid confusion, astronomers actually use two distance measurement scales: a co-moving distance that eliminates the expansion of the universe as a factor and a proper distance that includes it. That means the co-moving distance of JADES-GS-z14-0 is 13.5 billion light-years, while its proper distance is 33.8 billion light-years."
Oops ! That article citation mixed them up ... the comoving is the 33.8 one here ... while the light travel distance is the 13.5.
Oh, gotcha, thanks for responding. That makes a lot of sense. Space at that scale gets so weird with timey wimey stuff