Is stuff getting bigger? Is empty space appearing making everything further apart? Why isn’t there a definable center, isn’t everything going away from a point?
ETA: thank you so much for the explanations. I think this might be one I can’t get my head around without some more work, but I really appreciate all the help!!
In: Physics
Everything is moving away from everything else. There’s no center because there is no central point where everything is moving away from. Imagine drawing dots on a balloon and blowing up the balloon. The *surface* of the balloon represents the universe in that analogy. The surface of the balloon doesn’t have a center, all that dots are just moving away from all the other dots.
Ok, I know it’s an analogy and analogies can break down if examined too closely, so tell me if I’m doing that.
In the balloon example – everything is enlarging to achieve that effect. Is that also happening with the universe?
The universe is in fact getting larger.
Yes space is being created.
When the big bang happened it did not happen is space. It created space. So there was no center before it happened.
If you think of the big bang as an explosion everything that was in the big bang when it was “set off” is still in the universe so in a way everything in the universe was at the centre of the expansion. To tell the “real” centre of the explosion you would need to observe the universe from the outside.
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