Hi MTaylor,

Welcome to the forum.

Some people add to the balloon analogy.

Imagine you have attached coins to the balloon - as the balloon expands, the distance between the coins stretches, but the coins remain the same size. The coins are analogous to galaxies, or more accurately clusters of galaxies.

The universe expands, but only on the largest scales where expansion overwhelms gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces that binds us, earth, and galaxies together.

It's said that if you clipped a very (very!) long tape measure to a distant galaxy, waited a while then wound it back in, your tape measure would be longer when you were done.

Nature hasn't provided long tape measures, but it has provided light, and light is observed to stretch between distant galaxies (red-shift).

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If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it... of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms...
Albert Einstein