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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5698142" data-attributes="member: 177">I repeat - the speed of light multiplied by a cosmological time does not get you something physically meaningful.  Much as your intuition says it should, it doesn't. Not really.  There are what are called "inflationary" models, in which there's a "period" before the appearance of normal matter, normal subatomic particles, and light, where the universe can grow to great size before there are any "things" in the universe relative to which we can measure speeds.  The "speed of light" has no meaning in a universe in which light does not exist.  *Time* doesn't even have a whole lot of meaning in an inflationary period, as what is inflating is spacetime - so time is inflating with space.Inflationary models are widely, but not universally, accepted.No.  The English language is designed to express concepts relevant to normal human experience - distances on the order of millimeters to miles, and times on the order of seconds to lifetimes.  The talk seems fuzzy because we are speaking of things not generally observed in day-to-day human experience, so your language is ill-equipped to handle them.  But, you guys don't know tensor calculus, the language in which this stuff is more easily and clearly stated.And, honestly, as we understand things today there is no such thing as an absolute stopwatch outside the universe.  "Time" is a concept that is only relevant *inside* the Universe.It is perhaps more accurate to say that space is getting bigger between objects, but yes, close enough.Morrus got this right - local conditions can overcome the expansion effect.  Your local solar systems and galaxy are tightly bound.  It is on scales outside that, where the universe is even more empty space than here, that the effect becomes obvious.</blockquote>

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