Science, Creation & EvolutionHello! 14 here.Jovaro, from the article: The speed of light poses a fundamental limit to the speed that an object can take, relative to objects nearby it.
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However, the above discussion only applies to objects on small scales in the universe -- for example, if you take a baseball or a planet or a star or a galaxy and try to accelerate these objects to the speed of light relative to objects nearby them, it is impossible to do. However, there is nothing which prevents objects that are separated by huge distances from moving relative to each other faster than the speed of light. Over these large distances, the effects of the universe's expansion become important, and the above discussion no longer applies.
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=56
Although the speed of light is relative in certain situations, the speed of light is not an absolute constant. Technically speaking, the speed of light limit only applies when you are in an "inertial frame" -- that is, sitting where you are, without any forces acting on you, and measuring the speed of an object that moves past a ruler and clock that you are holding in your hand. Across the large distances in the universe, however, we have a very different set of circumstances. No one is in an inertial frame, because everyone is being accelerated with respect to everyone else, due to the universe's gravitational field and the fact that the universe is expanding. In effect, the universe's expansion isn't really due to galaxies moving "through space" away from each other, but rather due to the stretching of space itself, which isn't governed by the same limits that we are.
So what do we have? Ages for the earth and the universe that may be inaccurate since the speed of light is not a true constant and does not factor in the expansion of the universe.
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