this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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I just don't get it.

According to the theory of special relativity, nothing can ever move faster than light speed.
But due to the expansion of the universe, sufficiently distant stars move away from us faster than the speed of light.
And the explanation is...that this universal speed limit doesn't apply to things that are really far away?
Please make it make sense!

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[–] fallaciousBasis@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Nobody does.

That's why we have the hubble tension.

Cosmology is full of tensions to catastrophes... No one really knows, definitively.

The greatest catastrophe, I believe, is the vacuum energy catastrophe. Which theoretically ought allow zero point energy (energy extraction from empty space - literally a vacuum.) that's according to quantum mechanics... But any time anyone's ever tried to do this and when they have actually measured it... It's infinitesimal. It's one of (of not the) the biggest tensions in cosmology.

Just like if anyone tries to tell you how old the universe is they're full of shit and it's a guess based on hell of a lot of assumptions not actual hard science.

And the problem with modern cosmology is it's been framed for so long in certain ways that most astrophysicist and cosmologists are tending to find what they think they should find. They're not really making new discoveries or unveiling new truths they're just trying the same old shit and getting equally shitty (meaningless) answers.