N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc) wrote:
Are there parts of space so far
away from us that it's expanding away from us *faster* than
the speed of light?

We expect so, yes.

Okay great, then assuming by some discovery we find out how much of the
universe is outside of our viewing range, will that affect the
calculations for the age of the universe?

Isn't it possible that given only what we can observe, we will always
come up with a finite age for the universe, and it will always be the
same age limit no matter when we do the calculation? For example if
we're calculating the age of the universe to be somewhere around 15-20
billion years old now, then a 100 billion years from now another set of
observers will look at what they can see in the universe at that time,
and they too will come up with 15-20 billion years rather than 115-120
billion?

In fact, wasn't there an observation made at one time, that some of the
oldest stars seem to be older than the age of the universe itself? I'm
not sure if that's been resolved or not.

Therefore the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation isn't
the cloak that surrounds the secrets of the Big Bang,

It is believed to be, yes. Choose a different word than
"isn't"...

but just the curtain around
a part of the universe that is now out of contact with us. An
endlessly expanding universe sure, but one that never had
a beginning?

It is also expected to have had a beginning. The current
distribution of matter around us is not pure iron, which an
inifnite Universe would produce. Nor are there iron to hydrogen
conversion engines predicted or observable, with anywhere near
the amounts required.

Well, how do we know the distribution of matter isn't highly iron? We
don't even know what dark matter is composed of yet. What if all of the
stuff out in the galactic halos are long dead star cores (including
neutron stars and stellar blackholes), which somehow migrate out into
the halo over time? Separated out by gravity in some sort of natural
galactic centrifuge. Afterall it seems like the laws of gravity are
starting to undergo modifications these days as we do more detailed
observations of the rest of the universe -- perhaps a galactic
centrifuge is a quite logical outcome of the laws that we will
eventually discover?

As for an iron to hydrogen conversion engine, why do we need one?
Doesn't matter just pop up out of nowhere in the vacuum? Near a
blackhole its anti-particles could get swallowed while the particles
would get boosted right out of the blackhole's vicinity in the jet. The
new particles could go into refreshing the galactic gas clouds for new
star formation. And mass and energy conservation would be preserved in
the universe by the fact that every year, more parts of the universe
become inaccessible to us as they go "beyond the rim".

Yousuf Khan