Hubble's law is the name for the observation in
physical cosmology that:
- Objects observed in deep space (extragalactic space, 10 megaparsecs (Mpc) or more) are found to have a Doppler shift interpretable as relative velocity away from Earth;
- This Doppler-shift-measured velocity, of various galaxies receding from the Earth, is approximately proportional to their distance from the Earth for galaxies up to a few hundred megaparsecs away.
Hubble's law is considered the first observational basis for the
expansion of the universe and today serves as one of the pieces of evidence most often cited in support of the
Big Bang model. The motion of astronomical objects due solely to this expansion is known as the
Hubble flow.