Recent content by scopehead

Not having made it past high school physics, I almost don't feel worthy to even post a question here amongst all you eggheads :) Can someone explain to me in simple terms why gravity waves don't imply the existence of gravitons? Is it an entirely different kind of force? I always had thought...

Great explanation. Thank you. But I wonder why, in all the popular media, they say that objects are x light years away, as in the example of "the furthest known galaxy?" Seems like most people are as misinformed as I am (was), even the quasi-scientific writers. But I guess that's another thread.

Ok, so I'm looking at an image of the furthest known galaxy, 13.1 billion LY away. So a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, our universe was at least 13.1 billion LY in radius? Probably even much bigger, right? If that's the case, it all makes sense. My mistake was in assuming the...

Thank you both for your responses. I am still trying to wrap my brain around it and will probably have more questions soon. I think I'm missing something critical.

I've never understood this: we measure the edge of the observable universe to be around 13 billion LY away, so we are seeing the state of things 13 billion years ago. But 13 billion years ago, wasn't the universe much, much smaller? Did distant quasars and galaxies look like they do "now" so...