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tzaeru

Would the reversal of the expansion of the universe break causality?

My understanding of why causality would be broken by superluminal transfer of information is that we would end up in a situation where there were incompatible disagreements about order of events in different frames of reference. This situation can only happen with some sort of a round-about, such as two spaceships moving away from Earth in opposite directions at relativistic speeds both pinging Earth and the Earth pinging them back. Hence, causality as implied by the special theory of relativity is not broken by the observing of galaxies moving away from us at speeds faster than c, nor is it broken by calculating a distance traveled divided by time experienced in a non-inertial frame.

But if the universe started to shrink and there were galaxies that were once inside the cosmological event horizon, then went beyond it, and entered back into it, wouldn't this mean that it would be possible to break special relativity and end up with all sorts of pretty weird situations?

Posted Aug 14, 2024, 7:01 AM UTC

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