Do astrophysicists take into consideration the expansion of the universe when calculating the speed of light?

I think of it in the example of a moving object #1 upon (or inside) another moving object #2 which changes the relative and actual speeds of object #1. Although light travels roughly 186,000 miles per second than how fast it traveling as it rides the expanding fabric of space? I know I'm in over my head but I would really like to know if my theory holds any water?
Do astrophysicists take into consideration the expansion of the universe when calculating the speed of light?
The speed of light is constant regardless of how fast the source of light is moving towards or away from us.



What DOES change is the frequency (wavelength) of light. A source of light loses energy as it moves away from us. The light is shifted towards red in the visible light part of the spectrum (lower frequency/longer wavelength). This is the famous %26quot;red shift%26quot; that you may have heard about, which is caused by the Doppler Effect.



In any case, as I said, the speed of light remains constant throughout.
Do astrophysicists take into consideration the expansion of the universe when calculating the speed of light?
It's a theory that has been debated.
The speed of light is c. It doesn't matter whether the universe is expanding, or how fast. All observers observe all light rays to pass them at c.
The speed of light isn't calculated, it is measured. The universe as a whole may be expanding but scientific instruments aren't.
According to inflationary theory, when the universe was very young, between 10^-34 and 10^-30 seconds old, the universe expanded a trillion trillion times our measured speed of light, separating events that simultaneously started at a point, to position them forever far beyond any further contact at light speed. These zones of an extended universe are far beyond the boundary of the observable universe, yet as far as we know, the speed of light out there remains our measured value of 'c' even though its red shifted wave lengths will never reach us.
The speed of light is constant as determined in a vacuum.

That is the measurement we use.

The expansion of universe is now believed to be 71km/s/mpc +/- 5%. That is about 159,000mph, which is slower than the speed of light, for objects up to 3.26 million light years away. Now that is relative to earth. Say you can travel away from earth twice that distance, 6.52 million light years away. Do you think that because you are twice the distance from earth, which, according to the formula, objects move away at twice the speed, that now light travels twice as fast to keep up with the universe expansion rate? No

The expansion rate is relative to any chosen starting location.

From earth the speed of light is constant. 7 million, 30 million, 4 billion, light years away from earth, the speed of light is still constant.
That's the whole point of light speed it is a constant. So no matter what is happening to space its speed does not change. after all they are inseparable as the space time continuum.
Well currently the speed of light is exactly 299,792.458 km per second since they redefined the meter according to the speed of light and that definition is the distance that light travels in 1/299792458 of a second so as long as they are using metric then it's not necessary to consider the expansion of the universe.
Keep that thinking. It is difficult to think outside the boundaries of light speed. That doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.



We are shackled by this.
This a good question and there is some indication that the speed of light %26quot;might%26quot; have been different in the early universe. However the effect of the expansion of the universe is to increase the wavelength of a photon not change it's velocity
You ignore two important aspects of relativity:



First: The addition of velocities is not the same as it is in Newtonian space:



r = (v1+v2)/(1+v1*v2/c虏) %26lt;= v1 + v2



(c being the vacuum speed of light)





Second: There is no such thing as actual speed of an object. It is all relative. Without an inertial frame of reference, you can't measure speed at all.



The vacuum speed of light can also be measured for objects that are not subject to the expansion of space - for example a long glass fiber. Solid objects in space are not growing, they are compressing all the time back into their normal size.



The vacuum speed of light is also no normal velocity, it is a universal constant, that appears in many other phenomena independent of a motion. It is pretty much the maximum propagation velocity of events in the universe, and as such you can calculate the value of this constant with many possible events - from motion to nuclear physics.



PS: To make things even more annoying, can you imagine how the units of velocity and distance are defined by scientists? ;) They are fractions and products of the vacuum speed of light. One mile is always the distance a ray of light travels in the same fraction of a second.