Expansion Of Universe Limit


The term universe refers to all space and time and their contents including planets,stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. While the spatial size of the entire Universe is still unknown, it is possible to measure the observable universe. The earliest scientific models of the Universe were developed by ancient Greek and Indian philosophers and were geocentric, placing Earth at the centre of the Universe.             
  Over the centuries, more precise astronomical observations led Nicolaus Copernicus to develop the heliocentric model with the Sun at the centre of the Solar System. In developing the law of universal gravitation, Sir Isaac Newton built upon Copernicus's work as well as observations by Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Further observational improvements led to the realization that our Sun is one of hundreds of billions of stars in a galaxy we call the Milky Way, which is one of at least hundreds of billions of galaxies in the Universe. 

Accelerating Expansion Of Universe

The accelerating expansion of the Universe is the observation that the universe appears to be expanding at an increasing rate,so that the velocity at which a distant galaxy is receding from the observer is continuously increasing with time. The accelerated expansion was discovered in 1998, by two independent projects, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, which both used distant type Ia supernovae to measure the acceleration.The idea was that these type 1a supernovae all have almost the same intrinsic brightness (a standard candle). Since objects that are further away appear dimmer, we can use the observed brightness of these supernovae to measure the distance to them. The distance can then be compared to the supernovae's cosmological redshift, which measures how fast the supernovae are receding from us.The unexpected result was that the universe seems to be expanding at an accelerating rate. Cosmologists at the time expected that the expansion would be decelerating due to the gravitational attraction of the matter in the universe. Three members of these two groups have subsequently been awarded Nobel Prizes for their discovery. Confirmatory evidence has been found in baryon acoustic oscillations, and in analyses of the clustering of galaxies.

Evidence for acceleration

To learn about the rate of expansion of the universe we look at the magnitude-redshift relationship of astronomical objects using standard candles, or their distance-redshift relationship using standard rulers. We can also look at the growth of large-scale structure, and find that the observed values of the cosmological parameters are best described by models which include an accelerating expansion.

1. Supernova Observation : The first evidence for acceleration came from the observation of Type Ia supernovae, which are exploding white dwarfs that have exceeded their stability limit. Because they all have similar masses, their intrinsic luminosity is standardizable. Repeated imaging of selected areas of the sky is used to discover the supernovae, then follow-up observations give their peak brightness, which is converted into a quantity known as luminosity distance (see distance measures in cosmology for details). Spectral lines of their light can be used to determine their redshift.

For supernovae at redshift less than around 0.1, or light travel time less than 10 percent of the age of the universe, this gives a nearly linear distance–redshift relation due to Hubble's law. At larger distances, since the expansion rate of the universe has changed over time, the distance-redshift relation deviates from linearity, and this deviation depends on how the expansion rate has changed over time. The full calculation requires computer integration of the Friedmann equation, but a simple derivation can be given as follows: the redshift z directly gives the cosmic scale factor at the time the supernova exploded

2. Baryon acoustic oscillations
3. Clusters of galaxies
4. Gravitational waves as standard sirens
5. Dark Energy