"If the universe would just sit still, then light from a galaxy 33.8 billion light-years away would take 33.8 billion years to reach us, and that would be that. But, in the early 1900s, Edwin Hubble found that distant galaxies appeared to be receding away from each other, and the further apart they were, the faster they were going. In other words, the universe isn't static; it is expanding"

[–] MonkderDritte@feddit.de -2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Btw, the whole measuring expansion via redshift, EM waves aren't affected by the expansion? Because expansion would be 3D (not 2D) and we and our devices would get "bigger" too, not experiencing any difference...

Edit: getting downvoted for questioning my understanding...

[–] Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 months ago

Disclaimer: I could be wrong or not up to date, but this is my current understanding.

On the small scale, forces like electromagnetism and gravity pull things together much much faster than the rate of cosmological expansion. That's why "we" don't expand, and neither does our frame of reference. There's a potential end to the universe where the rate of cosmological expansion (which increases over time) finally exceeds gravity and electromagnetism and eventually even the strong force, causing everything to fly apart forever.

Light waves propagate through spacetime itself, and basically it ends up being that there's nothing pulling it back from expanding as the space it travels expands.

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