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The red line is the path of a light beam emitted by the quasar about 13 billion years ago and reaching Earth at the present day. The orange line shows the present-day distance between the quasar and Earth, about 28 billion light-years, which is a larger distance than the age of the universe multiplied by the speed of light, ct.
The accelerated expansion of the universe is thought to have begun since the universe entered its dark-energy-dominated era roughly 5 billion years ago. [ 8 ] [ notes 1 ] Within the framework of general relativity , an accelerated expansion can be accounted for by a positive value of the cosmological constant Λ , equivalent to the presence of ...
It represents the boundary between the observable and the unobservable regions of the universe, so its distance at the present epoch defines the size of the observable universe. Due to the expansion of the universe, it is not simply the age of the universe times the speed of light, as in the Hubble horizon, but rather the speed of light ...
The light-travel distance to the edge of the observable universe is the age of the universe times the speed of light, 13.8 billion light years. This is the distance that a photon emitted shortly after the Big Bang, such as one from the cosmic microwave background , has traveled to reach observers on Earth.
Much like the concept of a terrestrial horizon, it represents the boundary between the observable and the unobservable regions of the universe, [1] so its distance at the present epoch defines the size of the observable universe. [2] Due to the expansion of the universe, it is not simply the age of the universe times the speed of light ...
In an expanding universe, the speed of expansion reaches — and even exceeds — the speed of light, preventing signals from traveling to some regions. A cosmic event horizon is a real event horizon because it affects all kinds of signals, including gravitational waves, which travel at the speed of light.
An expanding universe generally has a cosmological horizon, which, by analogy with the more familiar horizon caused by the curvature of Earth's surface, marks the boundary of the part of the Universe that an observer can see. Light (or other radiation) emitted by objects beyond the cosmological horizon in an accelerating universe never reaches ...
For example, for visible light, the refractive index of glass is typically around 1.5, meaning that light in glass travels at c / 1.5 ≈ 200 000 km/s (124 000 mi/s); the refractive index of air for visible light is about 1.0003, so the speed of light in air is about 90 km/s (56 mi/s) slower than c.