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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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It is, but if the rate of expansion is constant (e.g. 0.1 m m^-1^s^-1^), then the acceleration in the speed of expansion that we observe is a result of the distance increasing.
So the space between two things that are 1 m apart will be expanding at 0.1 m s^-1^, while the space between two things that are 5 m apart will be expanding at 0.5 m s^-1^. As long as the force acting between two things is large enough to overcome the expansion rate right now, the distance between them will remain constant, because the acceleration is not a local effect but a result of the distance increasing.
As far as I understand, this is why we see other galaxies accelerating away from us, but don't see any individual galaxy "ballooning". Because locally (on the scale of a galaxy), gravitational forces overcome the rate of expansion. On large scales (to distant galaxies), there is effectively no gravitational pull, so the distance increases due to the expansion. When the distance increases, so does the observed speed of expansion, etc.
To reiterate: I'm in no way sure about this, it's just my coarse understanding of our current explanation for what we observe.