I understand that our local galaxy group is considered “gravitationally bound” and therefore exempt from the expansion from each other ((, but we don’t seem to have other galaxies collected into their own “local groups” of gravitationally bound clusters, so are we saying we’re somehow unique? Is there a trick of perception taking place?)) <—edit:this is wrong

I found this quote in the Wikipedia article on the Expansion of the universe.

While objects cannot move faster than light, this limitation applies only with respect to local reference frames and does not limit the recession rates of cosmologically distant objects.

It seems to me that if we can perceive at cosmological distance something that cannot exist, perhaps we are falsely observing an expanding universe. Maybe everything IS gravitationally bound and we’re just seeing expansion because… Relativity?

  • hallettj
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    206 months ago

    There are other galaxy clusters. Gravitational binding is not unique to the local cluster. From Wikipedia,

    Notable galaxy clusters in the relatively nearby Universe include the Virgo Cluster, Fornax Cluster, Hercules Cluster, and the Coma Cluster.

    The expansion of the universe is very tricky to explain. Oversimplifying can lead to an explanation that seems to be contradictory.