It just depends on which object one wishes to hold as their constant. If I measure space with my yard stick space is expanding. If I measure my yard stick with space my yard stick is contracting. But in no case is the yard stick expanding. So no one would say the miles are expanding.
It could be that I misinterpreted what you meant. If what you meant was that, “We do not say there are an increasing number of miles between the two objects,” then yes, we do.
However, your view seems to be that the box contains space, while it is space that contains your box. Your box is merely a demarcation of a set measure
3 and space expanded without regard to the boxes set limits. The two points of space that you had originally used to set the measure of your box have, indeed, moved on. If you reset your box to the new position of the original two points of space the volume of the box would be greater.
Try this: Find eight galaxies, sufficiently distant*, that could form the eight vertices of a cube. Wait 46 million years and the cube will have increased its volume by 1%. Your boxes volume will have expanded as space has expanded because its volume is tied to objects that move in concert with the space they are within.
Space is the name given to that which we experience as up-down, left-right and back-fore. They being three of the four dimensions of space/time. Space is a tripartite axiom as it were. With what other word would one use to explain it that wouldn’t suffer the same problem of comprehension?
Given a large enough chunk of space the mass within it can be considered, for our purposes
”, homogeneous, tenuous and immaterial. Space is physically expanding, but it does not have mass. Mass is a property of matter.
The space within an object, say a grandfather clock, is expanding right along with the rest of space. If the clock had no tensile strength or self gravity it would be torn apart by the expansion. That is if you could get the clock to resist the cold draft coming down the stair which applies a force umpteen trillion times greater than the force of expansion.
Space/time is warped by the mass contained within it, but time is not a property of mass. A bowling ball warps a trampoline but trampoline is not a property of bowling balls, nor does the bowling ball define the trampoline . And any mass significantly large and dense enough to noticeably interrupt our personal
spatial experience has done so by killing us.
The conflict of explanations you experience may be simply that different folks using different methods emphasizing different aspects of a very difficult, multifaceted subject.
I’ll bear with your attempt at comprehension if you’ll bare with mine.
They have threads for this. AbE: A day later and I've just read YOUR thread for this. What, no takers?
*Sufficiently distant would require that they be so far apart that their random motions are dwarfed by the motion caused by the expansion of space.
”The Universe is warped on the large scale by the mass contained within it but it’s a detail that we can concern ourselves with after we’ve a general idea of what’s going on.
AbE: I intended "temporal" not "spatial". After all, the Earth interrupts me daily.
Edited by lyx2no, : New evidence falsified one of my cherished positions: I'm not dead.
Kindly
******
Ever eat a pine tree? What are you, stupid?
™ Version 4.2
