This is a problem that's been bugging me for ages and perhaps there's a member that can squash it for me once and for all.
It might seem like a strange question but I get the impression that the assumption is the Universe is expanding and we are in that Universe.
Then again we are also part of that Universe so are we expanding?
Some estimates put the Universe at 93 billion light years in diameter. That's about 545883364800000000000000 miles.
It's taken approx. 13.5 billion years to expand this far, from zero diameter or close.
Now I know the Universe hasn't expanded at a uniform rate over this time but if it had it would have needed to grow by 40435804800000 miles every year.
Shame things are not actually this simple. But based on this if the Universe expanded by this much over the next year then it would have increased in size by approx. 0.000000000074074%
Using that percentage a mile would grow, if you could measure it from outside of the Universe, by 0.000119210547456mm. That's a tad over 1mm every 10,000 years. And 65million years ago a mile would have been 25ft shorter.
So it makes me wonder if every atom in the Universe is part of the expansion, an expansion we may not be able to measure because the ruler is getting bigger too.
It might seem like a strange question but I get the impression that the assumption is the Universe is expanding and we are in that Universe.
Then again we are also part of that Universe so are we expanding?
Some estimates put the Universe at 93 billion light years in diameter. That's about 545883364800000000000000 miles.
It's taken approx. 13.5 billion years to expand this far, from zero diameter or close.
Now I know the Universe hasn't expanded at a uniform rate over this time but if it had it would have needed to grow by 40435804800000 miles every year.
Shame things are not actually this simple. But based on this if the Universe expanded by this much over the next year then it would have increased in size by approx. 0.000000000074074%
Using that percentage a mile would grow, if you could measure it from outside of the Universe, by 0.000119210547456mm. That's a tad over 1mm every 10,000 years. And 65million years ago a mile would have been 25ft shorter.
So it makes me wonder if every atom in the Universe is part of the expansion, an expansion we may not be able to measure because the ruler is getting bigger too.
