Why doesn't the actual location of galaxies right now make any difference?

All relativistic cosmological models let you predict where galaxies are at any instant in cosmological time. In principle, given the model that fits our data the best, we could predict what the space of space looks like today, some 15 billion years after the Big Bang, and predict where the most distant galaxies are located RIGHT NOW. But this information is not needed for any astronomical purposes. First, because forces only transmit their influences at the speed of light, the thing that matters is where a galaxy APPEARS to be right now, not where it actually is. Gravitational and electromagnetic effects are retarded in time and do not happen instantaneously. It doesn't matter to us that a galaxy we see 10 billion light years away is now 50 billion light years away, it is only its gravitational field at thee 10 billion light year distance that now effects us at this moment. The cosmological model takes all of this 'relativity' into account.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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