azafran

I'm still confused. Space contains stuff and this stuff at the horizon point of the observable universe appears to be moving away from us at 3 (ish) x the speed of light. Therefore we shouldn't be able to observe it, should we? In fact our observations would indicate the universe is shrinking because stuff that is expanding away from us approaches then eventually exceeds the speed of light and therefore becomes lost from our point of view.

I'm trying to get my head around the rate of expansion and limitations of the speed of light? If the expansion of the universe is approx. 71 km/sec / megaparsec, and the distance to the observable universe horizon is 14 gigaparsecs, then the rate of expansion at the furthest observable point works out at about 3 x the speed of light. Isn't this impossible so what am I missing?

A 60 year old mechanical engineer speaking (MSc etc etc). If space is expanding what is the opposite? You get nothing for nothing therefore a 'force' must be created for every cubic metre of space that is being created as the universe expands. Fair enough, but this means each cubic metre of space in the universe contains some sort of force that was required to create it during the original expansion? Answers in less than 1000 words please.