The universe ONLY 14 BILLION years old???

I’ve been reading some of this lately and I am quite frankly, annoyed

as Hell.

I will use the following article as a reference…

New Scientist Article

In part:

2 The horizon problem

OUR universe appears to be unfathomably uniform. Look across space from one edge of the visible universe to the other, and you’ll see that the microwave background radiation filling the cosmos is at the same temperature everywhere. That may not seem surprising until you consider that the two edges are nearly 28 billion light years apart and our universe is only 14 billion years old.

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there is no way heat radiation could have travelled between the two horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now.

This “horizon problem” is a big headache for cosmologists, so big that they have come up with some pretty wild solutions. “Inflation”, for example.

You can solve the horizon problem by having the universe expand ultra-fast for a time, just after the big bang, blowing up by a factor of 1050 in 10-33 seconds. But is that just wishful thinking? “Inflation would be an explanation if it occurred,” says University of Cambridge astronomer Martin Rees. The trouble is that no one knows what could have made that happen, but see Inside inflation: after the big bang.

So, in effect, inflation solves one mystery only to invoke another. A variation in the speed of light could also solve the horizon problem - but this too is impotent in the face of the question “why?” In scientific terms, the uniform temperature of the background radiation remains an anomaly.

Ummkay, who can point out the problems here?

The first thing that pops out at me is this…

“That may not seem surprising until you consider that the two
edges are nearly 28 billion light years apart and our universe is
only 14 billion years old.”

Didn’t we go through this a few hundred years ago? As I recall it, it
was Copernicus that stuck his neck out and suggested that the Earth
was not the center of the bloody universe!

Oh, wait, heres a lovely Wikipedia article about it…

Wikipedia article on Copernicus

Now it seems that allegedly modern astronomers have taken a
long step back and decided that our little spinning rock is the
center of the universe.

Hmmm…

Could it be that the 14 billion light years we can see in any given
direction might just be as far as our telescopes can see? Admittedly
14 billion light years is a long damn way to see but it also implies that
logic has been put on the shelf so some jackass can draw a paycheck
for not using the gray matter between his ears! Until someone can
show me empirical data proving me wrong, the Earth is not the
center of the universe!
To think otherwise implies an arrogance that is utterly
mind staggering.

Next up…

”Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there
is no way heat radiation could have travelled between the two
horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang
and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now.”

Proof? Can anyone prove beyond any doubt that nothing can travel
faster than the speed of light?

Now before you go on about this theory, that theory, and the other
theory take into account that they are theories. With all due respect
to Einstein, Hawking and all of the other brilliant minds engaged in
academic pursuits, theory is fine. Facts and proof are better.
Theoretically, nothing can travel faster than light. This does not
mean that there is something we have yet to observe that could make
light look like a narcoleptic snail in comparison.

In theory I can make your piss turn blue if I focus my mind but
I ain’t countin’ on it.

And finally…

“So, in effect, inflation solves one mystery only to invoke another.
A variation in the speed of light could also solve the horizon problem
- but this too is impotent in the face of the question “why?” In
scientific terms, the uniform temperature of the background radiation
remains an anomaly.”

So far the only anomaly I see is their lack of logic. I suppose
Cambridge must be paying by the hour so they have to cast
all efforts at logic to the wayside to make a living.

Here is a logical theory for you to chew on Mr PhD, sir….

Some time beyond our feeble comprehension, the universe was
formed and all the matter was scattered far and wide. How far
is hard for us to say as our current level of technology limits us
to a relatively small sphere of the vastness that is the universe
that is observable from our tiny planet. To assume that all we can
see at this time is all there is to see is foolish at best.

What are my credentials, you ask? My credentials are two eyes
and a functional brain. Apparently that is no longer a requirement
for paid cosmologists.