As the balloon expanded, every masking tape galaxy moved farther away from each of the others. This is similar to the way in which galaxies in space move away from each other as the universe expands.
We also graphed our data. This gave us another way to look at how the distance between any two masking tape galaxies changed as the balloon universe expanded.
From these plots, we can see clearly that the masking tape galaxies are moving away from each other as the balloon gets bigger.
If you have not done so, graph your own data so that you can see a similar picture.
For the most part our balloon is a good model of what goes on in the cosmos. In some places in the universe, there are galaxy clusters. The galaxies within a cluster do not move away from each other. This is because the local force of gravity overcomes the tendency for them to move apart. But in general, most of the galaxies in the universe are moving away from each other.
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