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Actually, it can. The mathematics, formally known as "calculus of infinities", allows it. But in a more practical sense, the Universe as we know it is but a bubble in a sea of "quantum foam". While infinite in span, the bubble STILL grows, stretching the underlying space-time fabric, and increasing the distance between two given point, even if those two points are stationary, relative to each other. Astrophysics is literally mind-blowing stuff. . .

"Astrophysics is mind-blowing stuff". And thought blowing. And reason blowing. And logic blowing. Until recently we used to call that "wrong". Clearly logic reason and meaning no longer have any value among the dominant majority of astrophysicists.

Just why isn't a case emerging neo-ptolemyic scholaticism? Is the dominant view TODAY always right? With the intellectual life at the universities being what it is, why do we fail to question the "latest findings" in this increasingly byzantine and contentious field (that's right, this article is ignoring all the consensus that ISN'T).

Sure these folks have numbers to back up what they say. So does everyone else. Only a reasoned analysis can reveal whose numbers most accurately reflect actual conditions.

But to return to science as discovery rather then science as metaphysically revealed religion we would have to turn from science a the knowledge of the TRUTH to science as the awareness of the problem.

Given the state of public and university education these days, I fear the heyday of true scientific QUESTIONING may be over for a while.

Still, while we've truly gained what we've gained, clearly scientific progress stalls during intellectual and cultural declines.

For those who would argue the above, dealing with the inarguable fact of our overall intellectual and cultural decline is their largest nemesis.