The Galactic Scale

there all along. As it turns out, the planets all follow this spiral progression, held together in a perfect state of Push and Pull to keep them functioning.

The Galactic Scale

Finally, this leads us to explore the effects of Potential on the galactic scale. For this scale, the easy one to distinguish is spirality. In fact, galaxies come in a myriad of beautiful, spiral forms you’re likely familiar with. But what of the Push and Pull effect?

This is perhaps one of the most bizarre forms of the Push and Pull of Potential present in physics. First, let’s point out the easy part – the Pull. Gravity is the culprit, just like on the solar system level. Indeed, within a single galaxy itself, velocity exists to provide the counterbalance of the Push. But things get stranger when we step back a bit further and look at multiple galaxies at once.

Galaxies do not orbit one another. Gravity exists between them. But what takes the place of that spinning velocity? Potential always finds a way to exert itself and establish the duality, and it is no exception here. We’re going to add a new word, perhaps, to your definitions – Inflation.

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We’re going to have to dive into a bit of physics to explain this one. You’ve, no doubt, heard of the speed of light. It is roughly 186,000 miles per second. Now we have a fairly good idea of how old the universe is, and we also know nothing can move faster than the speed of light. Given those two facts, the size of the universe should be about 13.8 billion light-years across. Yet, this isn’t the case. In fact, the universe, to our best estimates, is more like 93 billion light-years.

On the surface, this seems to make no sense. But Potential needed a Push to keep the universe in order, and it did something rather remarkable here. It created inflation.

Inflation is what we call the universe expanding. Galactic clusters are actually spreading apart faster than the speed of light. Now we just said nothing could move faster than the speed of light, so you’re likely wondering how this is possible and doesn’t break the rule of light speed.

In the deep vacuum of space, space itself is stretching. It is not moving; it is stretching. The nothingness between galaxies is getting bigger. I use the term nothing a bit loosely. Even the emptiest void of space is quite busy, but that is a subject for another book. For our purposes, we’ll just consider it empty. Our focus right now is that nothingness can grow in size.

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Potential, on a galactic scale, provides the Push by literally just making the universe a bigger place.

Since this space is being created, it has no velocity. So, even though it appears far away galaxies are moving away faster than the speed of light, they are not actually moving, so don’t violate the speed of light.

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