How can the most distant quasar be 28 Billion light years away? (Strange Universe Series)

As I have stated in the past. There has always been a Universe and there will always be one.

If, of course, the space between us and the quasar is expanding as theorized…in the end, I just don’t know. ;-)

Where in your linked article does it say the quasar is 28 billion light years away?

I really believe pictures, maybe from this site www.galaxyzoo.org would help you and me picture the miles in our heads. The universe is so incredible huge, and the miles you are curious about are so immense, we need visuals.
As for my version of an answer to your question, traveling 28billion in only 13billion possible light years; Traveling does not consider how far the ‘Big Bang’ flung it initially. Thats my opinion.

@JustmeAman Whether we accept a Universe that sprang into existence 13.75 billion years ago or one that re-emerged at that time, it is clear for evidence like the Cosmic Background Radiation that the light we see today should not have begun traveling toward us more than 13.75 billion years ago.

@iamthemob My thoughts exactly.

@Cirbryn Oh, sorry. You have to calculate it from the redshift factor stated, which is 6.43.

From Wikipedia; “The highest redshift known for a quasar (as of December 2007) is 6.43, which corresponds to a proper distance of approximately 28 billion light-years from Earth.”

@MissPoovey Thanks for the link. Your answer may well be right. When I finally get my answer for NASA’s Ask an Astrophysicists website I will make this one my next question. Right now, I am waiting to for an answer to question 3 on the list above.

@ETpro Ah, thanks. So I think the answer to your question is in that link you just gave. The wiki article says it corresponds to a “proper distance” of 28 billion lt yrs, and “proper distance” is linked to another article here explaining that proper distance is the distance between two objects at a given time that takes the expansion of the universe into account.

So the light didn’t travel 28 billion light years in 13.7 years time. It traveled somewhat less than 13.7 billion light years, but while it was traveling the quasar that emitted the light moved farther away, at a pace that is calculable. Since we know the distance at start and the speed and acceleration of the object moving away, we can tell the distance now.

Here’s another discussion of the idea.

@Cirbryn Aha! Eureka! Mystery solved. Thank you so much.

When you think about how far away the most distant observable objects must have been when the light left them, and how close that must have been to the brith of the universe, the mind begins to melt.

@Cirbryn – that’s how I conceived of the idea – but then, @ETpro‘s question regarding “seeing things in the past” – at some point, though, we shouldn’t be able to see the object anymore, if the space is moving faster than the speed of light. Or is this something that’s solved by the nature of photons as massless particles…?

@iamthemob You see what’s still puzzling me in @Cirbryn‘s answer.

From what I gather, the period of rapid expansion resulting in apparent movement faster than the speed of light happened very shortly after the big bang, before the quasars even formed. Expansion slowed after that, so the light from a quasar that subsequently formed, say 10 billion light years away from us, might eventually reach us. It would probably take longer than 10 billion years for the light to get here because expansion is still going on at a slower pace, so as the light travels the distance it has to travel through increases. Thus it might take 13.7 billion years or so. By that time, the quasar that originally put out that light would have moved away from us to a distance of about 28 billion light years.

I found a good graphic of the expansion of the universe, showing the early expansion period and subsequent more gentle expansion, here

very interesting trying to make everything in our universe fit our understanding.

Well I’d characterize it as the opposite of that: trying to make our understanding fit the universe.

@Cirbryn My problem was that the speed of light is one constant that is independent of the speed of the observer or the light source. So if you were in the nose of a very long spaceship, say one light minute long, your ship was traveling at speed of light (just as a thought experiment), and someone at the back end of ship flashed a light on, you would see their light in precisely 1 minute. The same would apply if two ships passed each other, each going ½ the speed of light in opposite directions. If ship A signaled ship B one minute after passing each other, the light would take precisely one minute to go from A to B, even though they were moving apart at the speed of light.

But I worked it out in my head why more than 13.75 billion light years is possible. It is because the light travels at the speed of light regardless of the speed of the observer and source, but its red shift is determined by the stretching of space-time, effectively stretching out the wavelength toward the infrared. In other words, win one for the Cosmologists. No surprise there. They are pretty clever people.

Spacetime expansion happens at superluminal speeds.

In the future the universe will get very dark. All we got left to watch is our own supercluster of galaxies.

@mattbrowne – Until…dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun.

Measurements of Time and distance do not belong to the universe itself they only exist within it, While the universe exist outside of both.

This is why it is the beginning and also the end in itself.

Measurement are in between the beginning and the end.
When you get to the beginning there you also find the end.

Existence is a circle
When we search the beginning for the end, we neglect the center
We are surrounded by time and distance in a ring
The universe represents our marriage to existence
One is all, the circle is a zero
The unity of all defies individualization.

So is that a yes or a no?

Yes, it can be 28 billion light years away and we can’t see it.

@mattbrowne But it is 28 billion light years away and we do see it. :-)

@ETpro – It was closer when the photons left the quasar.

Question -

As light is both a particle and a wave in terms of its behavior – as light left the star at a point where space had not expanded and so reaches us despite the difference in space, shouldn’t the wavelength of the light from any star at a sufficient distance from us flatten at a rate indicating the speed at which the space is expanding?

Essentially, as time goes on, we’d see light shift colors as it comes from a star?

@mattbrowne Exactly. That’s the answer I was looing for.

@iamthemob Absolutely right. That is exactly what red shift is.