New York State of Mind

It’s not often an advertisement sums up a deep truth about the universe, but here’s one that does.

One of the commonest questions about the Big Bang is “If the universe is expanding, is everything in it getting bigger? The solar system, the sun, the earth, our bodies and the atoms we are made of?”

The answer is no, anything that can hold itself together won’t get any bigger as the Universe grows. For big things (like our Milky Way galaxy, or the Solar System within it) gravity provides the glue that stops them from stretching; for little things like rocks and people electrical forces between atoms hold them together. Only the space between galaxies (and clusters of galaxies) grows as the Universe expands which is just as Einstein’s General Relativity predicts, and our most sensitive measurements confirm. (Phew)

But Manhattan Mini Storage nails it in eight words. Those New Yorkers, always in a hurry…