QUESTION: Age and Speed of the Universe
If the universe is about 15 billion years old, and the earth
is about 15 billion light years away from "the beginning'
doesn't that mean the we have been travelling at the
impossible speed of light from the source for all this time?

As nothing can go this fast, there must be something wrong
with our reasoning here?  But, what?

ANSWER from Trisha Borgman on April 18,1996:
Well, this is a very good question.  First of all, the
"impossible speed of light" is only impossible for things
with mass.  It is not impossible for photons (the smallest
packets of energy) to travel at the speed of light.
You are correct in reasoning that it WOULD be impossible
for us to travel at the speed of light.

Astronomers currently believe that the Universe is somewhere
between 10-20 billion years old.  The age of the Universe is
an extremely active subject in astronomy research today, and
determining this age is one of the primary goals of the Hubble
Space Telescope.  Anyway, your estimate of 15 billion years
old is a good guess...  However, why do you say that the
earth is "15 billion light years away from 'the beginning'"?
The earth (and our solar system) was formed about 5 billion
years ago--we know this quite well from geologic information
from within the earth, as well as from the moon.  Just because
the Universe is 15 billion years old does not mean that we are
15 billion light years away from the center of the Universe--
the point at which the Big Bang occurred.  In fact, that
singular point at which the Big Bang occurred is now EVERYWHERE
in our Universe.  This is a difficult concept to grasp...
The Big Bang occurred, as far as we know, in a single point in
space; however, that single point has grown to become our entire
Universe.  Therefore, that singular point is now everywhere!

When the Big Bang occurred, matter like planets and stars
and atoms did not form instantly.  It was much too hot for
ordinary matter to be created in those first few instants--
instead, everything was sort of like a very hot, gaseous
soup.  If we could somehow take an ordinary flashlight and
shine it at this Big Bang Soup, not even the light from
our flashlight would be able to pass through the soup.  It was
much too dense for even light to pass through.  The point here
is that quite a bit of time had to pass before matter could
even be created.  It took even longer for atoms to be able to
hold themselves together, longer still for atoms to group
together to form molecules.  And, as you can probably guess
from my train of thought, it took a very long time before
the very first stars, galaxies, and planets were formed...
and longer still until our dear Planet Earth was born.