Shrinking would require multiple physical constants to change. Even worse, they would have to change in perfect lockstep. Any deviation would radically affect chemistry.
Can you describe what mechanism of shrinking you’re referring to? I assume you’re talking about some sort of compression where atoms remain the same size but get closer together.
That wouldn’t work. You would need to change the orbital sizes, bonding forces (EM strong and weak, at least), and flow of time exactly in lockstep. Any deviation would show up in quantum mechanical experiments. None of these appear to have simple relationships to each other. It would be a huge new lump of physics to allow this to happen.
The more likely explanation is that space has a very slight tendency to expand. It would need intergalactic (not just interstellar) distances to be detectable. We also know that (very strongly suspect) that space expanded rapidly in the very early universe. Space then collapsed into a cooler, more stable state. It was initially thought the expansion tapered off to zero, but it might be slightly positive still.
Big, huge, unfathomably large structures in the Universe, such as galaxies, are measurably expanding away from each other.
The atoms that comprise your body are not measurably shrinking.
We are not shrinking. Astounding large things that are very far away from us are generally getting further away from us, and other astoundingly large things.
To further the raisin bread analogy:
The raisins are not shrinking, the dough is expanding, making the distance between the raisins increase.
Big, huge, unfathomably large structures in the Universe
Observed from??
Unfathomable distances
I don’t need to defend my position because this is not an academic discussion but it’s not absurd to say we don’t know much about the nature of the universe and if say and entire galaxy were shrinking, or raisin whatever, being a spec in that galaxy we wouldn’t observe that at an atomic level.
So, perhaps I was too flowery with my wording here.
Galaxies are unfathomably huge and distant in terms of a human trying to grasp their size as anything relatable, anything other than an abstract number with a huge exponent.
We can and have and still do measure the actual distances to far away galaxies. Likewise with their size, and likewise with atomic and subatomic particles.
We have observed, measured, and calculated that the father away galaxies are from us, the faster they are moving away from us. This concept is generally encapsulated as Hubble’s Law.
but it’s not absurd to say we don’t know much about the nature of the universe
This is in fact absurd to say, unless you take ‘we’ to mean something approximating 5th graders.
Let me try another angle here:
If we, as in, our entire galaxy, and our sense of scale and distance, were for some reason shrinking, and the rest of the universe was static…
Why would we not observe everything outside our galaxy, or solar system, or planet, or whatever the boundary of your proposed ‘shrinking zone’ is… why would we not observe everything outside of that becoming larger?
If this were actually happening, we could very easily measure and observe this… but we don’t.
Are they moving apart or are we moving further away by becoming smaller?
Shrinking would require multiple physical constants to change. Even worse, they would have to change in perfect lockstep. Any deviation would radically affect chemistry.
Can you describe what mechanism of shrinking you’re referring to? I assume you’re talking about some sort of compression where atoms remain the same size but get closer together.
That wouldn’t work. You would need to change the orbital sizes, bonding forces (EM strong and weak, at least), and flow of time exactly in lockstep. Any deviation would show up in quantum mechanical experiments. None of these appear to have simple relationships to each other. It would be a huge new lump of physics to allow this to happen.
The more likely explanation is that space has a very slight tendency to expand. It would need intergalactic (not just interstellar) distances to be detectable. We also know that (very strongly suspect) that space expanded rapidly in the very early universe. Space then collapsed into a cooler, more stable state. It was initially thought the expansion tapered off to zero, but it might be slightly positive still.
Big, huge, unfathomably large structures in the Universe, such as galaxies, are measurably expanding away from each other.
The atoms that comprise your body are not measurably shrinking.
We are not shrinking. Astounding large things that are very far away from us are generally getting further away from us, and other astoundingly large things.
To further the raisin bread analogy:
The raisins are not shrinking, the dough is expanding, making the distance between the raisins increase.
Observed from??
Unfathomable distances
I don’t need to defend my position because this is not an academic discussion but it’s not absurd to say we don’t know much about the nature of the universe and if say and entire galaxy were shrinking, or raisin whatever, being a spec in that galaxy we wouldn’t observe that at an atomic level.
So, perhaps I was too flowery with my wording here.
Galaxies are unfathomably huge and distant in terms of a human trying to grasp their size as anything relatable, anything other than an abstract number with a huge exponent.
We can and have and still do measure the actual distances to far away galaxies. Likewise with their size, and likewise with atomic and subatomic particles.
We have observed, measured, and calculated that the father away galaxies are from us, the faster they are moving away from us. This concept is generally encapsulated as Hubble’s Law.
This is in fact absurd to say, unless you take ‘we’ to mean something approximating 5th graders.
Let me try another angle here:
If we, as in, our entire galaxy, and our sense of scale and distance, were for some reason shrinking, and the rest of the universe was static…
Why would we not observe everything outside our galaxy, or solar system, or planet, or whatever the boundary of your proposed ‘shrinking zone’ is… why would we not observe everything outside of that becoming larger?
If this were actually happening, we could very easily measure and observe this… but we don’t.
Could we actually observe this, please tell us how you would.
Edit: let me guess you would take your raisin and put it on a triple beam balance.
Also, if localized shrinking did exist why would it be unique to our carve out of space?