{"id":1837,"date":"2026-02-13T05:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/?p=1837"},"modified":"2026-02-13T05:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:05:12","slug":"absolute-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/2026\/02\/13\/absolute-rest\/","title":{"rendered":"Absolute Rest?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start\">It is a common\u00a0<em><strong>mis<\/strong>understanding<\/em>\u00a0that what someone once jokingly called the \u201cBig Bang\u201d theory describes the universe as expanding from a single point.<\/p>\n<p class=\"q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start\">What General Relativity actually suggests is just that in the distant past the universe was very dense (but still of infinite extent) and very hot, with everything flying apart so that since then it has been becoming less dense but not actually \u201cexpanding\u201d in the sense of having a boundary that is moving outwards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"q-text qu-display--block qu-wordBreak--break-word qu-textAlign--start\">With regard to the second question about whether an object can \u201cremain stationary\u201d, in the absence of gravity (ie in Special Relativity) there is no way for an observer to identify whether or not it is moving in any absolute sense. But it is possible to identify whether an object is moving relative to any particular other object, or to the centre of mass of all the other material in its visible universe (so long as that visible universe contains just a finite total mass). And in General Relativity this can be done by checking for isotropy (sameness in all directions) of the microwave background radiation coming from the \u201cBig Bang\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-is-the-rate-of-expansion-of-the-universe-from-a-single-point-Can-an-object-remain-stationary-in-the-universe\/answer\/Alan-Cooper-5\">(1002) Alan Cooper&#8217;s answer to What is the rate of expansion of the universe from a single point? Can an object remain stationary in the universe? &#8211; Quora<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is a common\u00a0misunderstanding\u00a0that what someone once jokingly called the \u201cBig Bang\u201d theory describes the universe as expanding from a single point. What General Relativity actually suggests is just that in the distant past the universe was very dense (but still of infinite extent) and very hot, with everything flying apart so that since then &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/2026\/02\/13\/absolute-rest\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Absolute Rest?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topics":[],"class_list":["post-1837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1839,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions\/1839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1837"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=1837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}