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?
In: 121
Because they **do** recede faster!
Think about this: if everything around us was moving away at 10km per year, then two of those things next to each other would be “staying still” (relative to each other). This isn’t what actually happens.
By “uniform expansion”, it is more understood as “1 km this year -> 1.00002 km next year”. So if you start 1km away, you hardly notice any difference after a year (only 2cm), but if you start 100 billion km away, you’ll move 2 million km.
Note that this also allows for everything to experience expansion equally (appears the same to all perspectives).
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