https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/fyi-where-center-universe/#:~:text=Stocktrek%20Images-,First%2C%20it’s%20important%20to%20know%20that%20the%20big%20bang%20wasn,dots%20represent%20clusters%20of%20galaxies.
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All of space (Space-time) expanded from one point in space-time. That point was the centre of the universe.
Note the article says “appears to be at the centre”. It’s a comment on the observation that the universe is expanding, not a literal statement. If you naively assume the universe is expanding from a single “origin point”, then Hubble’s observation of expansion happening everywhere would imply every point is the centre. This obviously doesn’t make sense, and that’s because the initial assumption that the universe is expanding from a single central point is incorrect.
Key point: this is referring to the *observable* universe
Light travels at a speed and the universe has an age. How far away we’re able to see is determined by how long the light has had to reach us. Our observable universe is a sphere with a radius of 93 billion light years. if you travelled a billion light years away from earth, you would still only be able to see a sphere around you with a radius of 93 billion light years. Your observable universe would look different but it would be the same size and it would be centered on you no matter where you went.
Say you’re on the surface of a balloon. As it inflates, everything stretches out from where you are like you are the center.
It’s going to be that way at nearly any place on the balloon: as it expands, it all expands outward from wherever you are.
I think it’s kind of like that.
Simply because the universe, to the best of our knowledge, has no center.
We cannot say for sure but if our physics is right, the universe is very likely unbound and infinite. There is no edge and no end.
Then there is the thing we call the observable universe. It is what it sounds like, the universe we can observe.
Because light takes time to reach us, we are looking back in time the further away we are looking in space.
We can look so far back, the universe was a opaque gas cloud everywhere, and very little light from that time escaped that gas. Eventually we hit a theoretical stop, the birth of the universe, and we cannot look further back than that.
Where that edge is lies our cosmic horizon.
So our observable universe has a size, and that is 13.8 billion light years (the age of the universe) + the expansion of space, so 46.5 billion light years in every direction from here.
Actually, not here, but from wherever you are observing.
You are in the most present you can be, which also means you are in the most center position you can observe the universe, which means you are always in the center of the _observable_ universe.
You are literally the center of the universe and with science to back it up.
But unfortunately that is not so special, since that is true for everyone and every point that exists.
But for the _whole_ infinite universe, if it is truly infinite, there is no center.
We don’t know where the center of the universe is, or if it even has a center.
All we know if anywhere we look, the universe is expanding at the same rate. If everything around you is expanding at the same rate, then you are in the center of that thing. If everywhere you go in the universe, it is expanding around you at the same rate, then every point in the universe could be defined as “the center”. But we can’t actually prove that
You’re in the ocean, just floating along. As best you can tell, in all directions around you, you appear to be in the center of the ocean. Same with anyone else out there (assuming there’s no land in sight).
So it’s merely referring to what we can observe. Others have said that there isn’t a center, but I would just add a “that we know of” to the end of that. We just don’t know.
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