QUOTE (gabrielj81 @ Aug 11 2009, 04:16 PM)

I'll not attempt to refute your points, since I can see why pointless imaginative unscientific philosophical musing can be fun.
But one thing I need to correct what you've said is that the universe is not ACCELERATING faster than the speed of light.
The speed of light in vacuum is a constant no matter the frame of reference and can never be accelerating or decelerating. The universe on the other hand is expanding at an accelerating rate, where each point in space is expanding outwards in all dimensions as time evolves.
i would like to thank you for the straightforward and intelligent reply.

anyhow, i'll like to correct myself and reinstated what i meant by the expansion of the universe is accelerating faster than the speed of light.
you're absolutely correct that the speed of light is a constant and finite by nature, which is about 2.999 x 10^8 (or approximately 300,000,000 m/s or 300,000 km/s).
now first, we must agree on these fundamental conditions about the nature of light's speed:
1. any material matter with a rest mass will not transmit faster than light's speed.
2. in a inertia reference frame (or simply "rest frame"), no objects can be accelerating faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
3. because photon is massless (no rest mass) and is an electromagnetic energy, information can be transferred and communicated at the speed of light. for example, electric pulse and satellite signal communicated at light speed.
but here's why those fundamental conditions don't work with the universal law of spacetime.
1. space property is not material matter. it is just emptiness or void substance, which means space with rest mass absolutely make no sense.
2. in space, all objects are moving away from each other. this means no objects are at rest frame or frame of reference, so space does not exactly try to "race" with the speed of light begins at its rest frame. instead, everything is moving away caused by space expanding in all directions, like you mentioned.
3. space is not an electromagnetic energy, thus no information is being communicated and exclude from any energy substances. in fact, space is being created.
therefore, the fundamental law of light's speed does not applied to the acceleration of the universe.
but okay, i'll explain and address in detail.
initially the inflationary period of the big bang caused the universe to expand rapidly, and the wavelength of light must be sketching by this expansion, thus by the time, light od distant objects reached us, all we see is the long electromagnetic spectrum or visible light in a set of color shifted.
this was discovered by the Hubble telescope that we now know the universe is expanding by observing the color shifted of distant celestial objects.
Hubble, who is a telescope astronomer, introduced this discovery with his calculated variable, called the Hubble constant to measure the expanding universe speed.
consequently, when astronomers measured the distance of faraway galaxies, quasars, and supernovas, they used Hubble's law with technical method from the Doppler effect.
this Doppler effect allowed astronomers to observe the electromagnetic wavelength shifting toward a particular color region of the optical spectrum.

when considering this effect, the color shifted to red corresponding to a lower frequency range, and color shifted to purple corresponding to a higher frequency range.
in other words, objects that are farther away will be shifting toward red and closer objects toward purple on the optical spectrum.
realistically speaking, most objects are shifting toward blue, yellow, and red since they are extremely far away measured in thousand to million to billion of light year (fyi, 1 light year = 5.8 x 10^12 or about 6 trillion miles), so we're talking about astronomical number of measurement.
the Hubble constant varies also, meaning as the universe expanding, the Hubble constant is decreasing depending on observation.
but for now, the WMAP data provided picture of illuminating objects such as celestial objects near the center of galaxy, and gave us information about the color shifted, and we can then, used it to calculate the Hubble constant to be approximately 71 km/s/mpc.
this constant value is debatable but lets accept the data since there is no method to prove unless technology improve dramatically in the future.
now, the equation for the cosmological velocity of the expanding galaxy defined by the change in color shifted distance is:
v = c * ln(1+z)
where, c = speed of light, z = redshift.
now, to show that the speed of universal expansion is greater than light speed itself, we must showed that v (cosmological velocity) is greater than c (speed of light).
but to get v > c, we need the value of z (redshift) to be greater than 1.8 (z > 1.8 for v > c).
and the value of z (redshift can be calculated by Hubble's law:
z = (H*D)/c
with H = Hubble constant, D= distance of celestial object, c = speed of light.
i will not explain how we get z since we already know that for z > 1.8, the color of distant galaxy must be shifting toward red on the optical spectrum scale, because only redshift object can reach this value.
and surprisingly, the observable telescope data found most distant object with redshift is actually well over 1.8, even reaching over 5, like quasar emitting light about 5 billions year ago. that means distant galaxy with redshift with z greater than 1.8 is quite common.
and plug the value of z (either use z = 1.8 or 5) for the cosmological velocity equation:
v = c * ln(1+z)
v = 300,000 km/s * ln(1+1.8)
v = 308,886 km/s
or if z = 5 (like quasar moving away from each other), then v = 537,528 km/s.
which is higher than the speed of light c = 300,000 km/s. (ie, v > c).
so technically speaking, any distant galaxy with redshift greater than 1.8 is moving away from us faster than the light speed, and we have found that redshift objects in the universe.
that's why the expansion of space itself is accelerating faster than the speed ofl light by observing the light shift of celestial object in the universe.
QUOTE
There is an "event-horizon" similar to that of a black hole where the region of our universe beyond a certain spherical radius around our point of reference is expanding away from us at a speed at the speed of light, and by extrapolation of the theory, the space beyond that imaginary spherical surface is thus travelling away at faster than the speed of light, and time dilation effects wrt to our POV becomes significant approaching that point. Hawkings have also shown that that that region, from our POV it would appear that it is radiating Hawking radiation similar to the surface of a black hole. Very strange indeed.
are the "event-horizon" you mentioned is the blackhole's horizon right?
the initial thought of everyone, including Hawking himself and confused myself during a research study, predicted nothing escape the blackhole, but this is actually not true.
Hawking predicted that when mass/matter get absorbed by the black hole, it actually should evaporates out thermal or heat energy.
initially he was thought everything went into the singularity, nothing came out, and everything destroyed (which clearly violating conservation of mass/energy, 2nd law of thermodynamics).
however, his Hawking radiation theory, which he incorporated quantum mechanics and general of relativity, to save his theory.
in this theory, at the black hole's horizon, a set of two particles, one with positive mass and one with negative mass, appeared and annihilated each other out, forcing some radiation to escape in the process.
at quantum level, this process is called quantum fluctuation, where particles interact with virtual/opposite particles and destroyed each other, and it happened everywhere in space. this also implied nothing is actually empty at all because there is always ongoing activity of particle interaction.
anyway, back to the black hole's horizon, Hawking worked out the radiation equation which showed when stars' mass and matter get absorbed into the singularity of the black hole by its immense gravitational force, the negative/positive mass particles get sucked in, BUT some positive mass particles can escaped due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (ie, the unpredictability of the momentum and position of particles allowed this to happen), but it is still trapped inside the horizon.
that's how black hole radiates out heat trapping at its horizon.
though there is consequences for the black hole after absorbing negative charge particles. the black hole gets smaller and smaller to the point it can't held on and exploded, evaporating out "something" - Hawking claimed it's thermal radiation.
personally, i suspect it can be thermal radiation AND dark energy, which we still haven't discovered yet quite frankly.

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anyhow i can certainly be wrong since i'm still just at infancy stage of my astronomy study. lol
feel free to correct my mistake, i appreciate great discussion about nature.