Yes…I welcome the gleeful fusillade of BAUT members! I have worked on this for so long and from so many angles, the problem is what to leave in, and what to leave out. So rather than trying to explain everything at once, in this forum I have laid out the basic premise, and will respond to attacks/questions/criticisms as they arise.

Numbers are hard to come by, because astrophysicists are using a different paradigm. I know that sounds like a lame excuse, but I have asked many a PhD professor for the numbers, and they mostly ignore the question; the kinder ones tell me, “Sorry, you’re wrong.” I do not know how a question can be “wrong,” but that is the response I get when I ask for the numbers! So let me start with the “easy” one, the Hubble constant.

Suppose you ask your broker, “What is the bond rate today?” Your broker replies, “Its at 72 Lira per second per ton of gold.” What would you do with this information? It is utterly useless, because the units are so arcane. So it is with the Hubble expansion, expressed in kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/sec/mpc). These units are misleading, to say the least. They make it sound like the universe is coming apart at the seams! But it is not; the rate of expansion is sub-sub-sub-microscopic.

To convert into meaningful units, we must first divide by the number of kilometers per megaparsec, to get rid of the confusing distance-per-distance. Using the “accepted” value of Hubble constant, 72 km/sec/mpc:

(72 km/sec/mpc) * 1 mpc/(3.09 x 10^19 km/mpc) = 2.3 x 10^-18/sec. This number is so small, out of mercy, we multiply it by the number of seconds in a year, to get the expansion on an annual rate, like interest on a bond:

(2.3 x 10^-18/sec) * (3.15 x 10^7 sec/yr) = 7.3 x 10^-11/yr = 73 ppt/yr

Since the place-value for the number of kilometers-per-megaparsec (3.09) and the number of seconds-per-year (3.15) are almost the same, and their exponents differ by 12 (a factor of one trillion), it is handy to “round-down” the conversion factor to: 1 km/sec/mpc = 1 ppt/yr. In ordinary, scientific terms, the universe is expanding at a rate of about 72 ppt/yr, or 73 ppt/yr if you insist on accuracy. This is a small number. Very small. But I didn’t just pull it out of a hat. Is it clear now where this number comes from? And is it clear that the universe is expanding at a very, very small rate?