What if Frasier decided to toss the long rope and come up with something lighter. He makes a Megaparsec piece of Nanotube and coils it up. The tube is driven over to Pamela's house where they sigh and pick an end to take for their next game of tug of war. The first thing they notice is that the tube is getting 73.5 km shorter each secord! How do you grab that and pull?

Clearly I don't have any idea what I am talking about. What would really happen?

The gap in my understanding (in a field of many) touches on an issue that I think Steve brought up in another inflation discussion. Are the units of dimension (say planck length) inflating between two points or are there more unit being squeezed in over time.

Please correct me where I fall off track here. We have inflating space as a model for the expansion of the universe. Would shrinking matter (and decelerating light) work as an alternate model? Could the size of the Universe be constant while the matter within it shrinks, and appears to grow further apart?