Einstein Rolls Over

I must just be stupid.

Seriously.

Stupid, just plain stupid. Oh you agree? Well then, no need to read on.

But if you are curious why I am saying this let me explain.

Scientists seem to agree that the universe began something like 13.7 or 13.8 billion years ago with what they call "The Big Bang". Ever heard of it? The Big Bang?

Ever heard of Albert Einstein? The Big Bang, as far as I know, wasn't his idea. One of his ideas, though, was that matter, you know like atoms and whatever atoms are made of and whatever is made of atoms, can't move through space faster than the speed of light. In space, light travels a distance of one light year each year. Light, for any dummy like me at least, has had, if the Big Bang theory is correct, a maximum of 13.7 or 13.8 billion years to travel through space.

So far so good.

However, science also seems to propose that matter, you know, atoms and stuff, can't travel that fast. Light can and does but matter can't because it would take enormous energy to make matter accelerate to that speed, something like infinite energy.

Yet...

Our modern telescopes seem to be able to see galaxies and whatever that, my feeble mind tries to comprehend, were - what's the figure now - 46 billion light years away from earth when their stars shone the light we are seeing now. Or at least that's how far they are from us now. It's hard to know just which of those two possibilities is considered by scientific consensus to be true, or if the truth is something else entirely, something still consistent with this data.

Let that digest a moment...

So the "visible universe" according to really seemingly smart people is something like 91 or 92 billion light years across or at least maybe that's how big it was back then when that light first shone from its stars or something else, some other concept. It's hard to say what these scientists are actually saying.

No that can't be right, my feeble unscientific mind tells me. I must have misunderstood.

In any case, somehow the atoms that make up these distant galaxies managed to get 42 billion light years away from us in less than 13.8 billion years despite the speed limit for atoms, for matter, or even the speed limit for light.

I wish there were somebody in this world who speaks English and has the capacity to explain to me in ways that require understanding rather than faith or magic how this enormous contradiction can actually be true or even scientifically sound. Please, if you're out there and want to take up this challenge, do it without leaving anything out but without complicating your explanation beyond the understanding of dumb asses like me.

Of course this isn't the actual size of the universe, this 91 or 92 billion light years across. This is just what our telescopes have been able to see so far. Better telescopes will likely see much more distant galaxies. I have little doubt of that and my doubt is growing littler and littler the more science tries to convince me that there's no contradiction here.

Big Bang schmang...