And that leads us on to something even bigger than the universe. Some argue that we therefore cannot be sure whether the laws of physics could be broken in other cosmic regions – perhaps they are just local, accidental laws. We cannot observe or see across the entirety of the universe that has grown since the big bang because insufficient time has passed for light from the first fractions of a second to reach us. But when the light “set off”, the galaxy was only about 3 billion light years away from our galaxy, the Milky Way. This is approximately 10 23 km or 13.4 billion light years away, meaning that it has taken 13.4 billion years for light from the galaxy to reach us. There is a lot more universe out there than we can view, but the most distant object that we have seen is a galaxy, GN-z11, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. As time goes on, the volume of space increases, and light has to travel for longer to reach us. The universe is expanding at a rate of approximately 70km/s per Mpc (1 Mpc = 1 Megaparsec ~ 3 x 10 19 km), so current estimates suggest that the distance to the edge of the universe is 46 billion light years. Or rather, the observable universe’s existence. Assuming a traditional big bang cosmology and a light speed of 3 x 10 5 km/s, then we can calculate that light has travelled roughly 10 23 km in the 13.8 billion years of the universe’s existence. Things get a bit more interesting when you consider how far light has travelled since the beginning. It merely reinforces the knowledge that light travels very fast indeed. This in itself does not say anything at all about God. It seems, so far, that no object has been observed that can travel faster than the speed of light. If they they did exist, they would have an imaginary mass and the fabric of space and time would become distorted – leading to violations of causality (and possibly a headache for God). Fortunately, their existence as real particles is deemed highly unlikely. We learn at school that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light – not even the USS Enterprise in Star Trek when its dilithium crystals are set to max.īut is it true? A few years ago, a group of physicists posited that particles called tachyons travelled above light speed. Light travels at an approximate speed of 3 x 10 5 kilometres every second, or 186,000 miles per second. First, can God travel faster than light? Let’s just take the question at face value. To tackle the question, let’s break it down a bit. We work with professional researchers who have dedicated their lives to uncovering new perspectives on the questions that shape our lives. The Conversation’s new series, co-published with BBC Future, seeks to answer our readers’ nagging questions about life, love, death and the universe. This article is part of Life’s Big Questions But if she could, why haven’t we seen any evidence of the laws of physics ever being broken in the universe? If God wasn’t able to break the laws of physics, she arguably wouldn’t be as powerful as you’d expect a supreme being to be. It’s no wonder about the timing – tragic events, such as pandemics, often cause us to question the existence of God: if there is a merciful God, why is a catastrophe like this happening? So the idea that God might be “bound” by the laws of physics – which also govern chemistry and biology and thus the limits of medical science – was an interesting one to explore. I was in lockdown when I received this question and was instantly intrigued. I still believed in God (I am now an atheist) when I heard the following question at a seminar, first posed by Einstein, and was stunned by its elegance and depth: ‘If there is a God who created the entire universe and ALL of its laws of physics, does God follow God’s own laws? Or can God supersede his own laws, such as travelling faster than the speed of light and thus being able to be in two different places at the same time?’ Could the answer help us prove whether or not God exists or is this where scientific empiricism and religious faith intersect, with NO true answer? David Frost, 67, Los Angeles.
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