De Sitter Universe - Relative Expansion

Relative Expansion

This section contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed.

The exponential expansion of the scale factor means that the physical distance between any two non-accelerating observers will eventually be growing faster than the speed of light. At this point those two observers will no longer be able to make contact. Therefore any observer in a de Sitter universe would see event horizons beyond which that observer can never see nor learn any information. If our universe is approaching a de Sitter universe then eventually we will not be able to observe any galaxies other than our own Milky Way (and any others in the gravitationally bound Local Group, assuming they were to somehow survive to that time without merging).

Read more about this topic:  De Sitter Universe

Famous quotes containing the words relative and/or expansion:

    Are not all finite beings better pleased with motions relative than absolute?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.
    W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)