How Can Galaxies Move Faster Than the Speed of Light? [Video]

Charles Liu, astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, answers questions submitted to our YouTube Space Lab Channel

By Eric R. Olson

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Questions answered in this episode:

"If I'm near the speed of light, and someone else comes against me near the speed of light too, will we be nearly twice the speed of light relative to each other.? Would we be moving so fast in different directions that the time to reach to each other would be distorted to compensate for the speed?" - Bruno Portel "Lets suppose an object is moving faster than the speed of light. If an individual was looking at this object whiz by in space, would the light coming off the object (and hitting your eyes) be trailing behind the object's actual position in space? In other words, would the object appear to be moving at the speed of light, even though it is going faster?"- Dylan Thompson "How is it that the galaxies moving away from each other will eventually surpass light speed? (or How is it possible for galaxies to travel faster than light, but still comply to the theory of general relativity?)" - despratename

Submit your questions for the next round of Ask the Experts by clicking here and posting in the YouTube comments (Google account required). And while you're there be sure to subscribe to our Spacelab channel for weekly videos on space and astronomy.

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The question with the most "likes" will be answered in the next video by a new guest expert. Previous episodes have featured astronomer Caleb Scharf, physicist Lawrence Krauss and Scientific American's own editor in chief, Mariette DiChristina.

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