Sebastian Rut

Expansion Anomaly

2012, Chicago

Edition of 25

Metric expansion is a key feature of Big Bang cosmology and is modeled mathematically with the FLRW metric. This model is valid in the present era only on large scales (roughly the scale of galaxy clusters and above). At smaller scales matter has become bound together under the influence of gravitational attraction and such bound objects clumps do not expand at the metric expansion rate as the universe ages, though they continue to recede from one another. The expansion is a generic property of the universe we inhabit, though the reason we are expanding is explained by most cosmologists as having its origin in the end of the early universe’s inflationary period which set matter and energy in the universe on
an inertial trajectory consistent with the equivalence principle and Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Event Horizon

2013, Chicago

Edition of 25

In general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. In layman’s terms, it is defined as “the point of no return” i.e. the point at which the gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible. The most common case of an event horizon is that surrounding a black hole. Light emitted from beyond the horizon can never reach the outside observer. Likewise, any object approaching the horizon from the observer’s side appears to slow down and never quite pass through the horizon, with its image
becoming more and more redshifted as time elapses. The traveling object, however, experiences no strange effects and does, in fact, pass through the horizon in a finite amount of proper time.