In 2012, WMAP estimated the age of the universe to be 13.772 billion years, with an uncertainty of 59 million years. In 2013, Planck measured the age of the universe at 13.82 billion years.
Keeping this fact in mind and considering the speed of light, the size of visible Universe should be around 13.82 billion light years (considering Big Bang theory). But in reality, the observable universe is about 28 billion parsecs (91 billion light-years) in diameter at the present time. The size of the whole Universe is not known and may be infinite.
Is there any anomaly? Or what is the theory/explanation behind? Is it in conformity with the laws of Physics?
The point is: the "speed of expansion of the Universe" being a non-local quantity needn't be bounded by the speed of light. There is a detailed and clear explanation:
Expanding Confusion:
common misconceptions of cosmological horizons
and the superluminal expansion of the universe
arXiv:astro-ph/0310808
by Davis and Lineweaver
Dear Peter,
Thanks a lot for your answer. Am aware of the standardization of speed of light. But as it couldn't help in explaining this big gap in the numbers, so it haunted me to get some explanation.
Hi Serguei, thanks a lot for your answer. Yes, I was thinking in terms of Special theory of Relativity only. Thanks for the informative article link too. Application of General theory has put the proper light and explanation to this apparent mismatch.
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