"First you need to understand that the Big Bang was not an explosion of matter into space, it was an explosion of matter and space (technically space-time)."
This is a type of statement I have read many, many times, but to me, it's the same as saying "wakalixes!". I've never read anything that gave me a hint of why and how there should be a difference between two objects receding from each other and "space itself" expanding.
New space is being created between those two things.
When they move 1 meter apart from each other through space, they'd move 1 meter back again to meet up. But when space itself is expanding between them, they've moved 1 meter apart but now to get back together they have to move 2 meters.
This has some other subtler ramifications. It means that the space between the two objects can increase at faster than the speed of light (because you can't move through space faster than light, but space can expand faster than light). Also, with the Higg's field's nonzero rest value _energy can be created from nothing_ by creating space. Yes, this violates conservation of energy.
>>It means that the space between the two objects can increase at faster than the speed of light
Say they are two objects in the universe A and B. New space is created between A and B faster than the speed of light. There is a USB drive carrying a dump of wikipedia on B.
Does this imply information is now moving faster than the speed of light?
No because the USB stick is going nowhere, it just remains at B. Imagine a tiled floor where A and B are the centers of two tiles, the USB stick also resting on the B tile. Expansion of space just means that you are constantly increasing the gaps between tiles maybe inserting new tiles every time the gaps become wide enough. The USB stick however just rests on the B tile not moving through space, i.e. reaching another tile, ever.
Explain to me how this works. A and B remain stationary while only new space gets created between them?
By geometry, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. If A and B are two stationary objects, with a straight line being shortest distance between them. Then space is basically a twisted thread like path between A and B, More thread is created every time instant 't' than light can travel through it?
And if some one figures out a way to walk from A to B in a straight line then they can walk faster than anything that can walk on the thread?
Unfortunately I don't understand what you are suggesting or asking. Maybe this short video [1] with the classical balloon analogy will help you understand it better.
Let's say there is constant speed 'c' beyond which one can't travel. Lets say we travel at 'c'.
Figure 1 is the fastest possible way of going from A to B
If more space is added, and yet A and B remain at fixed positions, the only way this model will work is the path(possible way to go from A to B) gets looped/twisted and turned. In this case A and B remain at fixed positions but new space gets created. Its also possible in this model that as more and more loops get created fast enough, even by travelling at 'c' one can never arrive at B.
If the space is not looped or twisted this how A and B will move apart at increasing time instances t1, t2, t3
t1:
_ _
|_|--|_|
A B
t2:
_ _
|_|---|_|
A B
t3:
_ _
|_|----|_|
A B
t4:
_ _
|_|-----|_|
A B
...
tn:
_
|_|----------------
A
As you can see when we keep the space expansion a straight line the objects always move. But if we have to keep the objects fixed we have to loop, twist and turn the path(space).
If the objects were stationary, this is how it will look
Now I see what you mean, you are confusing two spaces. Imagine a finite two dimensional space, say one meter in each dimension. You are now almost certainly picturing something like a sheet of paper one by one meter floating in our three dimensional space in front of you or maybe the surface of a table of that size. The important thing is that this is not a picture of a finite two dimensional space, it is the picture of a finite two dimensional space embedded in a three dimensional space.
If you would crumble up the sheet of paper to a small ball than that would be a different embedding of the two dimensional space in our three dimensional space but importantly the two dimensional space would remain unchanged. That is a two dimensional creature living on the sheet of paper could not tell the difference between living in a nicely flat sheet of paper and living in the crumbled up ball of paper.
And that is the same in your picture, space is the string between A and B and you can not tell the difference between it being embedded in a straight or curled up manner. Even more importantly a space does not require any embedding at all. It is a limitation of our brains that we can only imagine a two dimensional space as a sheet embedded in our three dimensional space. A and B can get further apart without being embedded in any space and moving away from each other in the embedding space or having new space curl up in between them.
So your mistake is to assume that our space must be embedded in another space in order to be able to expand. This might be the case but it is not necessary and we have no evidence for that. It also starts an infinite regress, why wouldn't the space our space is embedded in be embedded in yet another space? And then that one and the next one and so on.
If our space was indeed embedded in another space and curled up there, than your suggested faster trip from A to B would be the equivalent of a two dimensional creature leaving the crumbled up ball of paper into the third dimension, moving a bit through our three dimensional space, and then falling back into the paper at a point nearby in our three dimensional space but potentially far away from the starting point if you moved only inside the crumbled up sheet of paper. You would literally have to leave space-time and move through a space that is not our space-time.
This is in some sense very similar to wormholes but in that case you do not have to leave space-time and move freely through the embedding space but you can follow shortcuts inside space-time due to the topology of it. But again there is no need for any embedding space even if all the pictures of wormholes show space-time with the wormhole embedded in another space.
This is a type of statement I have read many, many times, but to me, it's the same as saying "wakalixes!". I've never read anything that gave me a hint of why and how there should be a difference between two objects receding from each other and "space itself" expanding.