Here's the hypothesis
1. The age of the universe is 14 billion years
2. The 'oldest' object observed so far is 12 billion years old
3. The big bang happened

The implosion observed actually happened 2 billion years after the big bang. Assume that at that point the objects were 4 billion light years apart - each travelling in opposite directions at the speed of light so the calculation will be based on the maximum possible distance between the two objects.
We now have
Distance apart at time the implosion occurred = 4bln light years
Distance apart at time of observation = 12bln light years
Distance travelled by Earth since implosion = 12bln years * Speed

(Curr dist apart) = (Init dist apart) + (Time since implosion) * (Earth's speed)
(12 * 10 **9 * c) = (4 * 10 **9 * c) + (12 * 10 **9 * X)

hence X=2/3 the speed of light !!

This is making some assumptions but will give the average 'expansion' speed of the Earth (or the particles which now constitute the Earth) over this period.
The problem is that the Hubble constant shows the universe to be expanding
at roughly 70 km/s for objects 3 million light years apart - it will be greater
than this for objects 12 billion light years apart but nowhere near the required
rate.
I realize there must be a flaw with this logic but what is it ???

The flaw is calculations of this nature are just not that simple. You have to include the entire history of the expansion from the time of emission to the time of observation, there's no shortcut. It's just like an ant crawling on a stretching chessboard-- you need to know the entire history of how the chessboard is being stretched, the Hubble constant alone (which only tells you how it is currently being stretched) is not enough information. But I'm not even clear on why you have a question-- last I checked, there are 4,000 3-million-light-year segments in 12 billion LY, and 4,000 times 70 km/s is pretty close to the speed of light.

I understand that it is not that simple but I was endeavouring to calculate the 'average' speed needed for the age of the implosion to be correct. If Hubble's constant has been a constant for the past 12 billion years then relative velocity is directly proportional to distance for the viewed object. So if the 'average' speed required is (2/3)c and for Hubble to hold true the acceleration must be constant (otherwise velocity is not proportional to distance and Hubble 'constant' would be a variable at any given time)
(2/3)c = (Initial speed + current speed)/2

Assuming a 'steady' state throughout the entire period from 2 billion years onward then this becomes

Av. speed = (init speed at 4GLY (=4000*70/3.26=86000) + curr speed) / 2
198400 = (86000 + current speed) / 2
hence
current speed = 310800 km/s which is greater than the speed of light.

I understand this is based on steady state assumptions which may not be true BUT it also starts off with the premise that the initial distance between the observed and observing points was 4GLY which almost certainly is an overestimate since the particles in all probability did not travel at the speed of light for the first 2 billion years. It also presupposes that the object viewed was travelling in exactly the opposite direction to our path - also not 'probable' but both of these decrease the average speed.
Additionally using Hubble the relative speed for two bodies which are 12 Gly apart should be somewhere near 280000km/s (using 70 km/s Mpc) this is the combined speed of the two bodies relative to an observer positioned between the bodies. The above calclated speed of 310800 km/s only takes into account the expansion speed of the Earth relative to the fixed position of the imploding object.
Clearly steady state conditions have NOT existed which seems to suggest that at some point in the past the expansion rate was much larger than it is now and hence the acceleration rate is decreasing. This may be a rather simplistic approach but so are the above mathematical concepts and equations. It is not that I intrinsically believe my arguement but rather I do not seem to be able to come up with a creditable disproof. Maybe this is not the correct forum for these ideas since I am speculating rather than using more 'technical' ideas and equations - but I would still like to see a creditable refutation

Hi,
roco
you say “each travelling in opposite directions at the speed of light”
it would be easier to understand if you say that they were travelling a lot slower or even not moving.

There is nothing wrong with what you propose, and if the object were travelling in the opposite directions, and the total distance were greater than 13.7 then technically the hubble constant added up would exceed the speed of light.
(that is not a problem - because it is space that is expanding - not objects moving through space)

Distance apart at time the implosion occurred = 4bln light years
Distance apart at time of observation = 12bln light years
Distance travelled by Earth since implosion = 12bln years - 4bln light years = 8bln light years (for your example)

__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Hi there Blob,
my original conjecture for the distance being 4Gly was to give the maximum distances between the objects at the time of the implosion - nothing more. This was to ensure that the average speed would not be overstated. I do not have a problem with what you say but you must remember that this is the average speed and is the speed of only one object relative to a FIXED position. Maybe I should not have mentioned Hubble at all but that was to show that if we had a steady state what you would expect to be happening and to determine the starting velocity of the body relative to the fixed position (and looking at it now I actually used the relative velocity of the two bodies - using the current Hubble constant - which means that my original starting speed was too great which means that my average speed was too low). Now what you have is one body being expanded at a speed greater than the speed of light relative to a fixed position - unless we only started to accelerate at some point after the initial 2GY starting point - not likely or we would have to be travelling even more quickly now, or at some point in the past we were travelling more quickly and at a later point slowed that way the average speed calculation would be incorrect since we would not have constant acceleration throughout the period in question.

Hum,
When you say “Now what you have is one body being expanded at a speed greater than the speed of light relative to a fixed position” - that just means that it is beyond our observable universe.

There would have been many galaxies that have passed beyond the 13.7 light year distance mark (or space expanding at light speed mark) that we will never see. They have proverbially left the coop , they have passed on, they are ex-galaxies...

Perhaps this article will help (or not)

Quote:

The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Light reaching us from the earliest known galaxies has been travelling, therefore, for more than 13 billion years. So one might assume that the radius of the universe is 13.7 billion light-years and that the whole shebang is double that, or 27.4 billion light-years wide. But the universe has been expanding ever since the beginning of time, when theorists believe it all sprang forth from an infinitely dense point in a Big Bang. "All the distance covered by the light in the early universe gets increased by the expansion of the universe. Think of it like compound interest." Imagine the universe just a million years after it was born. A batch of light travels for a year, covering one light-year. "At that time, the universe was about 1,000 times smaller than it is today. Thus, that one light-year has now stretched to become 1,000 light-years." All the pieces add up to 78 billion-light-years.

Read more

__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Personally I am an Einsteinien - in other words I adhere to the E= mc2 field of thought and that as an entity approaches the speed of light it's mass approaches infity - in other words the speed of a body with mass can NEVER
reach and definitely not exceed the speed of light . Since observable celestial bodies have mass the concept of disappearing bodies due to their excessive velocity is anathama to my thinking. However I do agree that the speed of light is dependent on tyhe medium through which it passes but I must reiterate that the starting time frame is 2 billion years after the big bang when some form of STEADY STATE environment should have been evolved.

That is not the requirement to have that proportionality, indeed it is not satisfied yet the proportionality is. The sole requirement is the "cosmological principle"-- the expansion must be the same everywhere at any given age. If you have that, you have the Hubble law, but H is not constant with age. It's really a shame it gets called the "Hubble constant", it should be called the "Hubble coefficient". Also, your calculation is rough, yet gives a result not too different from c, so what are you worried about? It all sounds perfectly copacetic to me, given that we've agreed the answer should not have been exactly right (could easily be off, say, by a factor of 2, for example).

The general consensus is that the expansion rate was decreasing for most of the age of the universe, and only recently has switched over to accelerated expansion. So again, it's entirely consistent with the numbers, there's just no problem here.

Correct. But that is a velocity in space. It has nothing to do with how fast space itself can expand.

As an anology, think of a spider walking about on the surface of a balloon that is being blown up. The speed at which the spider is walking can stay the same, even though the size of the balloon is expanding.

Now consider two beings sending light signals to each other, and that over some time period the space between them has expanded by 0.1%. If the two beings were originally 1,000m apart, they'd now be 1,001m apart. Not much of a problem - the light signals would get there a little later, but they'd still get there. But if they were originally a billion light years apart, they'd now be a further 1 million light years apart. If that 0.1% expansion took less than a million years, then light could not have covered the extra distance in the time available. So a light signal setting off at the beginning of the period would never arrive (after the next such time period, the two people would be a a further 1.001 million light years apart, and so on).

When astronomers say that a distant galaxy is receding at 50% of the speed of light they don't mean that it is moving through space at that speed. They mean that space itself is expanding such that the distance between it and us is increasing by 150,000 km each second.