Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron
Force ratios work just the same as with inflation... which is why light from super-distant objects can never reach us since the apparent expansion of space between us is accelerating at a rate faster than the speed of light. The objects themselves aren't running away from eachother, they're just shrinking so the relative distance between them is expanding at faster than the rate of the speed of light. From those super distant object's perspective, we're actually moving at faster than the speed of light, just not in relation to space... we're simply shrinking causing the apparent distance to grow faster than the rate that light travels
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So how would one explain a galaxy with a redshift of z=7, which, using the mainstream "expanding space" model, was 3.5 billion light years away (angular diameter distance) when it emitted the light we are now seeing 12.9 billion years later. That galaxy is now estimated to be nearly 29 billion light years away, due to the expansion of the universe during that 12.9 billion years that the light was travelling for.
The apparent angular diameter of an object shows how large it looked when the light was emitted. If you see a moving object, you see it as it was when the light came from it, not as it is when you receive the light (by which time it might be closer, or further away). In that context, are we assuming here that photons also shrink in size whilst they are travelling through space? Is the speed of light constant too? Would that mean the speed of light was constant relative to the size of a shrinking photon and therefore not constant at all?