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The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time. [1] It is an intrinsic expansion, so it does not mean that the universe expands "into" anything or that space exists "outside" it.
Thus, an accelerating universe took a longer time to expand from 2/3 to 1 times its present size, compared to a non-accelerating universe with constant ˙ and the same present-day value of the Hubble constant. This results in a larger light-travel time, larger distance and fainter supernovae, which corresponds to the actual observations.
The spatial slices are expanding very fast to cover huge volumes. Things are constantly moving beyond the cosmological horizon, which is a fixed distance away, and everything becomes homogeneous. As the inflationary field slowly relaxes to the vacuum, the cosmological constant goes to zero and space begins to expand normally.
When the size of the universe at Big Bang is described, it refers to the size of the observable universe, and not the entire universe. [143] Another common misconception is that the Big Bang must be understood as the expansion of space and not in terms of the contents of space exploding apart. In fact, either description can be accurate.
LH 95 star forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The image was taken using the Hubble Space Telescope. Source: European Space Agency (ESA/Hubble) The observable universe is currently 1.38 × 10 10 (13.8 billion) years old. [16] This time lies within the Stelliferous Era. About 155 million years after the Big Bang, the first star formed.
In physical cosmology, the Big Rip is a hypothetical cosmological model concerning the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the matter of the universe, from stars and galaxies to atoms and subatomic particles, and even spacetime itself, is progressively torn apart by the expansion of the universe at a certain time in the future, until distances between particles will infinitely increase.
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Vacuum state is a configuration of quantum fields representing a local minimum (but not necessarily a global minimum) of energy. Inflationary models propose that at approximately 10 −36 seconds after the Big Bang, vacuum state of the Universe was different from the one seen at the present time: the inflationary vacuum had a much higher energy density.