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DocJanItor t1_jan4djg wrote

Reply to comment by Aseyhe in Why do cosmologists say that gravity should "slow down" the expansion of the universe? by crazunggoy47

Doesn't matter about their current velocities. The universe is 14B years old. It's bigger than 28B light years wide. Therefore the universe had to expand faster than the speed of light.

Further, light goes through the universe. The universe expands outside of itself into who knows what. We have no idea if the speed of light applies outside of the universe. Same for thermodynamics.

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Ape_Togetha_Strong t1_jan9j7f wrote

It sounds like you're imagining "expansion" to be some outward expansion from a point in space, rather than spacetime expanding everywhere. There's no reason to tie the age of the universe to its size (other than just how its size changes proportionally, relative to itself with time). It could have been any size prior to inflation. The fact that the observable universe is larger in lightyears than the age of the universe in years is not surprising or particularly meaningful.

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