I see where this is diverging a little bit.
But everything is expanding. Including matter. But the mass isn’t chaning.
But this also includes the space in between the objects.
So objects are getting further apart, but so are the objects getting bigger at the same rate.
The mind bend for me was realsing it’s not space that expanding really, it’s distance.
This is why distant light is red shifted. Because what started out as white, has had the wavelength expand with the universe, making it appear more red.
Yes, all distances are expanding, but not everything in space is expanding. Atoms aren’t expanding because atomic forces are far stronger than expansion is, for example.
Yet the distance between galaxies is increasing, so there must be a crossover point where one structure can stay structured but a slightly bigger structure is torn apart.
My question was if this size is larger or smaller than galaxies, and it seems to be quite a bit larger than galaxies at the moment.
The interesting thing is that the expansion is increasing, so this size limit is shrinking. Unless some change in forses happens (like inflation or some kind of false vacuum collapse) the limit will eventually be smaller than galaxies and they’ll get ripped apart. Eventually star systems will be ripped apart too, then stars (if any remain at that point) then planets, molecules, atoms, and bosons; and if if that continues to quarks funny things start happening that kind of look like the big bang.
That last part is still speculation of course, but I do still wonder if the expansion of the universe affects galaxy formation and dynamics, and if ancient galaxies were different in part because of this.
So yes attoms are expanding. everything is expanding. I mean that very literally.
Let me put it this way.
If you had a million year old meter stick. It would always be a meter. Accurate to the definition of a meter using the wavelength of I don’t remember what off the top of my head. It would always be a meter exactly.
But.
If you magically placed the meter stick next to itself from a million years ago, they would not measure the same. Even though they started with the same definition.
Like I said. Space isn’t expanding. Distance is.
EDIT I don’t mean the distance between things is expanding. The definition of what a distance was is expanding. So yes, attoms, when measured by size (the distance from one edge to another) has also expanded.
But in the same breath, the measured distance never changes. Because the way you use to measure distance has also expanded by the same amount. So nothing ever changes in reality, but everything is just constantly bigger.
Physics is full of hard to explain paradoxes.
What is expanding in this scenario? If atoms are expanding, then either atomic forces have also scaled to match the expansion, or atoms are getting more radioactive?
I don’t understand how atoms are supposed to be expanding in this model. The size of atomic nuclei and electron clouds are governed by the strength and range of the fundamental forces. If everything was expanding in lockstep such that atoms expand but don’t change their properties, then there would be no observable effects. Yet we can see the distance between galaxies not just getting larger, but speeding up.
If orbits, matter, and even the fundamental forces were expanding to match, no such change in “distance” should be possible, beyond the normal movement of matter.
If our metre stick was measured as 1/299,792,458th of a light second, then a million years later it was measured as exactly the same length but was somehow dimensionally larger, then lightseconds must have become larger is lockstep.
If that were true, this expansion could not explain the redshifting of light, as c would increase in lockstep with space, leaving light the same wavelength. Redshifting only happens when the distance between waves increases in relation to the speed of light, and so a universe with redshifting must have a difference in the rate of expansion and the rate of c scaling. Such a difference should be visible as increasing distance or an increase in the flow of time, at minimum.
In your model, everything is expanding equally. Literally everything, including the speed of light, the elementary charge, and even the plank constant, are expanding in lockstep, to the point of unobservability. Is this right?
