Experimental Tests of Local Cosmological Expansion Rates

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential for experimentally detecting local cosmological expansion effects within our galaxy using current satellite technology, suggesting such tests could be feasible within a human lifetime.

Contribution

It demonstrates that local cosmological expansion can be tested experimentally with existing satellite technology, challenging the assumption that such effects are unobservable locally.

Findings

Satellite technology can detect local cosmological expansion effects.

Experimental tests could be conducted within less than a human lifetime.

Local cosmological expansion effects are potentially measurable with current instruments.

Abstract

Cosmological expansion on a local scale is usually neglected in part due to its smallness, and in part due to components of bound systems (especially those bound by non-gravitational forces such as atoms and nuclei) not following the geodesics of the cosmological metric. However, it is interesting to ask whether or not experimental tests of cosmological expansion on a local scale (well within our own galaxy) might be experimentally accessible in some manner. We point out, using the Pioneer satellites as an example, that current satellite technology allows for this possibility within time scales of less than one human lifetime.