Full disclosure: I’m high, but what exactly is expanding in the universe? Like I read something at some point that said that galaxies and cosmological bodies aren’t actually moving away from us faster than light, the space between them is just expanding. They made a distinction somehow but now, a long time after reading that, I’m sitting here wondering what it is that’s expanding… and wouldn’t whatever it is be expanding faster than light? I hope someone can help because I’m starting to spiral out.
In: Physics
Think about baking chocolate chip cookies. When you put the little balls of cookie dough into the oven, all the chocolate chips are fairly close together. As the cookies bake, the dough expands and the chocolate chips are spread further apart. The chips themselves didn’t move through the dough, the dough itself expanded.
The chocolate chips are galaxies and the dough is spacetime. Objects can’t move through spacetime faster than light, but spacetime itself can expand much faster.
And since you’re high I probably just made you want cookies. Sorry about that.
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