Cosmic Time and Distance Calculations

Bruce Nelson
October 21, 2009

Due to expansion of the universe, times and distances do not behave as we would
expect. Primack and Abrams, p149, discuss an early galaxy with a 6.0 redshift. The
light we see from it was emitted when the universe was 950 million years old and has
traveled for 12.7 billion years to reach us. Its distance was 3.92 billion light years then
but has since increased to 27.5 billion light years due to expansion of the universe.
It is now moving away from us at twice the speed of light, although it is at rest with
respect to its surroundings. How do we know these things? Read on!
The purpose of this article is to present formulas for calculating the above quanti-
ties. Textbooks either do not give explicit formulas or else give them only for special
(generally obsolete) cases. Tom Weil’s article is very helpful, even including a com-
puter program to do the calculations. His equations (but not his nomenclature) came
from Ned Wright, who is on the WMAP team.

1 Observations
In the late 1920s Edwin Hubble found that most galaxies are moving away from us
with a velocity of 500 km/s for every megaparsec of distance (Mpc = 3.26×106 light-
years). His value was based on only about 20 galaxies; the Hubble Constant (H0 )
is now known to be about 71 km/s per Mpc. Recently this expansion was found to
be accelerating, usually attributed to vacuum energy [Primack and Abrams, p 90-93].
The Hubble “constant” is constant over distance, but not over time. It has dimension
of inverse time: dividing 71 km/s/Mpc by 3.0857×1019 km/Mpc gives 1/4.346×1017
seconds or 1/13.77 billion years (the approximate age of the universe.)
The expansion of the universe is characterized by a scale factor, a, which started
at zero and is now equal to 1. Astronomers can determine the value of a(t) for
a given light wave spectrographically by measuring its redshift, z, and calculating

1
a = 1/(1 + z). [Dodelson, p 7]. The redshift of received light (microwaves, etc.) is
due to the expansion of the universe during its travel time—in effect, the light waves
are stretched.
Galaxies appear to be uniformly distributed beyond redshift = 1, although there
is considerable structure (walls, filaments and voids) closer than that. The cosmic
microwave background (CMB) at redshift 1089 is uniform to five decimals. This
uniformity is enshrined in the “Cosmological Principle” and forms the basis for the
Robertson-Walker metric defined below.

2 The Robertson-Walker Metric

The universe should be imagined to have a coordinate system painted on it, say ra-
dius, azimuth angle and elevation angle, with ourselves at the center (for convenience).
These coordinates remain fixed to their galaxies except for small local motions. (Imag-
ine a globe of the world painted on a balloon. As the balloon expands, New York and
London move farther apart but their latitudes and longitudes do not change.)
The Robertson-Walker (R-W) metric relates the coordinate distances to the phys-
ical (or “proper”) distances, which increase in proportion to a(t). The main assump-
tion of the R-W metric is the Cosmological Principle. From this metric, Hubble’s
law, v = Hr, can be derived [Peacock, p 65]. The spacelike form of the R-W metric
is given by Dodelson, p 55.

dr2
" #
2 2 2 2
ds = −c dt + a (t) 2 2 2
+ r2 ( dθ2 + sin2 θ dφ2 ) (1)
1 − Ωk H0 r /c
The time, t, is what would be measured by any clock at rest in a typical galaxy.
Such clocks can be universally synchronized by relating them to the expansion of the
universe; e.g., from the temperature of the cosmic background radiation. Astronomers
use units of years and light-years, so the speed of light, c, is equal to 1 and is usually
omitted from equations. I have put c back in to make the dimensions clear.
The term involving Ωk determines the curvature of space. If Ωk is positive, space
has has positive curvature; negative Ωk gives negative curvature. For Ωk = 0, the
geometry of space is flat, just as Euclid assumed.
Although the R-W metric describes the geometry of the universe, Einstein’s field
equations are needed to calculate the rate of expansion.

2
3 Friedmann’s Equation
Shortly after Einstein developed his field equations for general relativity, Alexandre
Friedmann derived the R-W metric as a solution. The R-W metric is the equation of
motion for the scale factor, a(t).
Define the Hubble rate H(t) ≡ ȧ/a; its present value is H0 = 71 km/s/Mpc as
above. H(t) changes in time in accordance with Friedmann’s equation:
8πG ρc − ρ0
 
2
H (t) = ρ(t) + [Dodelson, p 3] (2)
3 a2
where ρ(t) is the average mass-energy density of the universe at time t (gm/cc), ρ0 is
its present value, and G is Newton’s gravitational constant. The critical density, ρc ,
is defined below.
At this point we need to recognize that the time, t, is not a useful independent
variable because we do not have expressions for the important quantities such as
density in terms of time. A shift to using the scale factor, a, as the independent
variable is just conceptual—none of the equations needs to be changed except to
replace ’t’ with ’a’. In the situations of interest, a(t) is monotonic and makes just as
good a time variable as t. (The relation between t and a will be derived later.)

4 Density
We need an expression for ρ, the average density of matter and energy in the universe
as a function of the expansion ratio. This is complicated by the fact that it has
three components, each of which varies differently with time. At the present time,
it consists of about 27% matter (both atomic and not), 73% vacuum energy, and
0.0049% radiation. These values are accurate to a few percent.
The matter density (think atoms or particles) scales inversely as the volume of
space (i.e. as a−3 .) The density of radiation particles (think photons) also scales in-
versely as the volume but in addition they lose energy as their wavelength is stretched;
their energy density therefore scales as a−4 . Vacuum energy has constant density—it
is a property of space and more of it appears as space expands. [Dodelson, p 4 and
Section 2.4]
The average mass-energy density of the universe is related to the curvature of
space by Einstein’s field equations. Since flat space is the boundary between positive
and negative curvature, the density for flat space is called the critical density, ρc . If
the actual density is greater than ρc , space is positively curved and has finite extent
(but no boundary). A lower density gives negative curvature and infinite extent.

3
 The present value of the critical density is calculated by setting all variables in
equation (2) to their present values (H(t) = H0 , ρ(t) = ρ0 and a = 1): ρc = 3H02 /8πG.
(It equals 9.5×10−30 gm/cc for H0 = 71 km/s/Mpc.) From the WMAP satellite and
other sources, we now know that space is geometrically flat, so its density is equal to
the critical density.
Let the density of matter, radiation and vacuum be ρM , ρR and ρV gm/cc. We then
define three dimensionless density ratios: ΩM = ρM /ρc , ΩR = ρR /ρc and ΩV = ρV /ρc .
The variation of density with the expansion is thus ρ(a) = ρc (ΩM a−3 + ΩR a−4 + ΩV ).
As we go back in time (i.e., as a gets smaller), the radiation term grows fastest and
eventually dominates.
Combining this with equation (2) gives an expression for the Hubble rate:
q
H(a) = H0 ΩM a−3 + ΩR a−4 + ΩV + (1 − Ω)a−2 , where Ω = ΩM + ΩR + ΩV (3)

5 Times and Distances

Since the Hubble rate is defined to equal ȧ/a = ( da/ dt)/a, a rearrangement of
equation (3) gives dt = da/(aH(a)), so the time it takes the expansion ratio to go
from a0 to a1 is
Za1
da
t(a0 , a1 ) = (4)
a
aH(a)
0

The time unit chosen for H0 determines the unit for t. Numerically integrating this
equation gives the present age of the universe as t(0, 1) = 13.7×109 years. Its age
when the galaxy emitted our z = 6 photon was t(0, a1 ) = 0.95 × 109 years, where
a1 = 1/(1 + z). The light travel time is the difference of these, 12.7×109 years.
We can ask how far away that z = 6.0 galaxy is “right now”. The fact that
its light took 12.7 × 109 years to reach us does not mean that the galaxy is now
12.7 × 109 light-years distant. Because space is expanding, light rays are not very
useful for measuring large distances—the distance changes significantly as the light
wave travels. The distance of a galaxy at a particular time is conceptually what you
would get if you could somehow line up a huge number of yardsticks between here
and there and read them all at that one time. Fortunately, the R-W metric will give
us the same answer without all that work [see Dodelson, p 34.] The proper distance
at the present time is given by:
Z1
da
D0 = c (5)
a1
a2 H(a)

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This equals 27.5×109 light years for a1 = 1/(1 + z) with z = 6. The galaxy’s proper
distance when the photon was emitted was D1 = a1 D0 = 3.92×109 light years. The
universe expanded by a factor of z + 1 = 7 since that time.
Since proper distance is not directly measurable, astronomers have devised various
ways to determine the distance of stars and galaxies. For nearby stars, the Hipparcos
satellite determined accurate distances by measuring their parallax; i.e., their appar-
ent shift as the Earth moves in its orbit. At the largest distances, type Ia supernovae
are used as “standard candles” to calculate distance from their relative brightness.
Dodelson’s book discusses distance measures and their relation to proper distance;
formulas are given to convert between them.
The value of the Hubble constant at an earlier expansion ratio, a1 , is just the
Hubble rate H(a1 ). The speed of the galaxy away from us now is S0 = H0 D0 = 1.995
times the speed of light; and when the light was emitted, the galaxy was moving away
at S1 = H(a1 )D1 = 2.756 times the speed of light. Although the photon was traveling
toward us at the speed of light (just as it should), the space between us was stretching
faster than that. The photon’s distance actually increased for about 9 billion years
before it finally got enough space behind it that the remainder was not expanding
faster than light. Note that none of this violates the special relativity prohibition on
moving faster than light—the galaxies are nearly stationary in their space, it is space
itself that is moving them apart, and special relativity does not apply to that.

6 Bibliography
1. Scott Dodelson: Modern Cosmology, Elsevier 2003

2. John A. Peacock: Cosmological Physics, Cambridge, 1999

3. Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams: The View from the Center of the Universe,
Riverhead Books, 2006

4. Tomas Weil: “Another Look at Cosmic Distances”, Sky and Telescope, Aug,
2001, p62

5. Steven Weinberg: Gravitation and Cosmology, Wiley, 1972

6. Ned Wright’s website: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm