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space-iconSpace and Physics
clock-iconPUBLISHEDMay 28, 2014

Biggest Misconceptions About The Universe Explained

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Lisa Winter

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Veritasium/YouTube

Back in March, the science world celebrated as researchers announced the first detection of gravitational waves; a smoking gun for the Big Bang. Scientists believe than in a time period lasting 10-34 seconds, the Universe expanded 100 trillion trillion times until it reached the colossal size of… a marble. The gravitational waves come from fluctuations of background radiation from this inflation period. With as excited as everyone was about that announcement, how much do we really know about the expansion of the Universe?

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In the latest video for Veritasium, Derek Muller explains some of the biggest misconceptions that people have about the Universe:

-How can the Universe expand faster than the speed of light if Einstein said nothing could?

-If objects are moving apart faster than the speed of light, how do we even receive the light to see it?

-How did the Big Bang happen only 13.8 billion years ago if the observable Universe has a diameter of 93 billion light years?

-The Universe seems to be infinite, so how could there be one tiny starting point?

-If there’s nothing outside the Universe, what is it expanding into? 

Check out the video for these answers and more:

 

 

 

[Hat tip: ScienceAlert]


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