PaulR said:
Thank you for this explanation.
As a follow up, I have seen many estimates of the Hubble parameter and estimates of the age of the universe.
If the Hubble parameter is algebraically always C/ R, why is this relation not used to refine the estimates.
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You don't specify, but I think by R you mean the HUBBLE RADIUS.
This is the present distance at which a stationary point would now be receding at speed c due to expansion.
One cannot measure this directly---or determine it in any other way than by the usual means for measuring H. So one cannot use measurement of R to refine that of H. It is more the other way around.
What one does is measure H as accurately as possible, sampling recession speed at all convenient distances, then once one has a value for H then one DEFINES the Hubble radius as c/H
(all c/H means is that distance at which the recession speed is c, because H is the ratio of present recession speed to present distance)
As a second question, does this difference also apply to an expanding black hole? I.e. if a body that has the right density is expanding, does that prevent it from being a black hole.
Sure!

That is what the people don't understand, who keep talking about us being in black hole. A region of spacetime which is expanding, even if has enough matter density to form hole if it were STATIC, nevertheless if it is expanding fast enough will NOT collapse to hole!
and BTW out at the Hubble radius (that Fulvie Melia was calling "cosmic horizon") stuff is receding at the speed of light so this spacetime region of ours is expanding like a bat out of hell.
and around big bang time, stuff was WAY denser than Schwarzschild requires, so why didnt the universe collapse then and there? Because it was expanding so fast.
Finally, what would an observer see when looking at a bubble that is 13.7 b Light years wide with the density we have. How would it differ from a black hole? Would the gravity not be suficient to form an event horizon from this outsider's perspective? Could the outsider easily traverse this sphere back and forth?
you mean 13.7 billion LY is the Hubble radius, so that is c/H and we are in space that is expanding at the rate H ( equals c/13.7 bLY)
you mean a bubble that has RADIUS equal to that, so it is twice that much wide.
Such a bubble is a typical chunk of our universe. To an outsider out near the bubble surface boundary it wouldn't look any different from any other similar volume. Geometrically it would be approximately flat.
CROSSING any rapidly expanding region raises more complicated issues. But suppose instead of crossing, the outsider just wants to dip in a few million LY and come out again. He could travel in and out of it just as he would venture into any other patch of space.
Remember that even though for us the boundary is receding at speed c, for him out there in the space around the boundary IT IS NOT MOVING. He is IN the space that is receding from us at speed c. So for him it is just ordinary space. there is nothing like a BH event horizon there. There is no point of no return. There is no trap. he can cruise across to our side, and be inside for a while, buy an icecream cone, and then cruise on back to the outside.