expanding heavens

[ismusa]

I've read somewhere that the universe is expanding and scientists don't know what is pushing out on all the matter and expanding the universe but I read in the Quran a verse "And we are constantly expanding the heavens." or something similar to that effect.

there could be less God explanation for the reason it's expanding like unseen phenomena or unkown physics.  I think technology is limited and will improve and get new answers in the future.  I heard all the stars were seeing all the galaxies hubble photographs were from many light years ago since light takes time to travel.  Maybe because light takes so long to travel then scientists can't get the big picture.

We are very fortunate to be in an area of space and galaxy that doesn't have violent explosions like supernova which travel at speeds faster than a bullet.  200 miles a second, at that speed debris can even blow away our atmosphere.  We are also very fortunate to have a sun that is not dying or is not chaotic like other stars in the universe.

[badgerbug89]

I was taught in my science class that the universe seems to be expanding b/c everything is just moving further away from each other, which is supposed to support the big bang b/c everything has that momentum outward which they can tell by light wave length or something. I'm not sure exactly b/c i didn't pay much attention in that class and it was a while ago. 

[MisterJingo]

Current models of the universe incorporate something called 'inflation' (the universe underwent a brief period of rapid expansion shortly after the bigbang - which explains why the universe looks mostly uniform in all directions).
We can tell objects are moving away from each other by looking at the frequency of their light reaching us. Due to doppler effect, objects moving away from us have more of the longer wavelengths (red - redshift), and objects moving towards us have more of the shorter wavelengths (blue - blueshift).
The doppler effect is basically the change in frequency and wavelength of a wave source as percieved by an observer moving relative to that source. For example, remember the sound of a police car coming towards you, it's siren sounds higher pitch (wowowowowowowowo) but as it passes you and moves away from you, it's siren sounds lower pitched (wooooo woooooooooooo wooooooo etc). The same happens with light (and all wave sources).

You're also correct about light, such as if you look at the sun (not directly!) you're actually seeing the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. A star one light year away, we are seeing it as it was 1 year ago. The further we look out into space, the further back in time we see.

Regarding supernovas, i've seen speed measurements of their outwards velocity at 10,000 km per second. This was a measurement of one. We have had supernovas quite close to us in the past (astronomically speaking of course!) and don't forget, our solar system was created by such a supernova billions of years ago.