“If the universe is expanding uniformly in all directions, why would objects farther away appear to recede faster?

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Read this phrase from Hubblesite and was confused, “In 1929, Edwin Hubble provided the first observational evidence for the universe having a finite age. Using the largest telescope of the time, he discovered that the more distant a galaxy is from us, the faster it appears to be receding into space. This means that the universe is expanding uniformly in all directions.”

If the speed of expansion is uniform, shouldn’t distance not even be a variable?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You can see this effect (in one less dimension) with a toy ballon. First, inflate it a little bit – enough so that it’s basically round and a little bit firm. Then use a soft-tipped marker (like a Sharpie) to make dots in various places on the surface of the balloon. These are your objects, and you could imagine they are stars in your experimental universe. Now, blow up the balloon some more. You will see that the ‘stars’ that are close to each other move apart some distance (as measured across the surface of the balloon, not through the inside of it). ‘Stars’ that are farther away from each other move even farther apart as the balloon universe expands.

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