It’s my understanding that in astronomical distances, things can be moving further apart by the space between them expanding, *not* simply by motion.
For example, say you have star A, 1 million light years from star B, both completely motionless for argument. These stars have a relative motion because the space between them expands, correct? So 1 million light years becomes 1,000,007 light years after 1 year of time.
If all that is true, does this affect smaller scale measurements? Does a mile of road technically become 1.000007 miles? Please let me know what I’m not understanding.
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In interstellar space, it would. But in the environments we live in, the gravity of nearby objects is enough to prevent the expansion (which is trying to pull things apart). So the expansion only takes over at very very large distance scales, on the order of tens of millions of light-years, where the expansion can win out against the thinly-distributed galaxies scattered across the Universe.
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