The universe is static and does not expand.

A static universe matched everyday intuition: stars and nebulae moved locally, but the universe as a whole could be imagined as a permanent background.

Einstein’s early cosmological model was static as well, although general relativity itself allowed dynamic solutions. Friedmann and Lemaître developed expanding-universe models before the observational case was decisive.

Meanwhile, Vesto Slipher had measured large redshifts for many spiral nebulae, and better distance measurements gradually turned those objects into external galaxies rather than nearby clouds.

By the late 1920s, the relationship between galaxy distance and recession velocity became clear enough to support a universe expanding on large scales.

The discovery was not the work of one person alone. Slipher, Leavitt, Lemaître, Friedmann, Hubble, Humason, and others contributed essential pieces.

Cosmic expansion also does not mean that everything is stretching locally. Gravitationally or otherwise bound systems—galaxies, solar systems, atoms—can remain intact.

The overturned claim concerns the large-scale geometry of the universe, not whether every object moves apart from every nearby object.