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PAllen
Science Advisor
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This has been written by some cosmologists, but it is not remotely justifiable in the math of GR. Given two 4-velocities of of separated bodies, there is nothing in the math of GR that distinguishes 'relative motion' from 'increase of distance without motion'. Nothing at all.Hernik said:Now I'm not a physicist and might get some slamming for this, so please correct me if this is wrong - but I was once told to think of the expansion of space as an increase in distances between objects without movement.
This also a common but strictly false statement. This is shown by the argument I gave earlier where maximal superluminal recession rate occurs in the special relativity limit of cosmological models. In particular, it shows that recession rate corresponds the special relativity quantity called celerity not relative velocity. In special relativity, celerity has no upper bound at all - it can be a thousand times c.Hernik said:That helped me a lot because it delivers an easily understandable explanation for why special relativity does not apply. There is nothing moving apart faster than the speed of light, just distances increasing - and for particles, stars or galaxies separated by a very large distance the increase can be more than 300.000 km/s.
Hernik said:It kind of helped me to understand what goes on in inflation also. Nothing moves. No inertia. Just distances suddenly grow enormously.
Henrik
Inflation is a separate model than generic big bang cosmology (FLRW solutions in GR). In classical GR, inflation may be modeled by an initial, large, cosmological constant that then decreases to almost zero. However, viewed in classical GR terms, it remains true that there is nothing you can identify about two separated 4-velocities to say they do not represent motion.