Where is the center of the Universe?

We are at that point. All points, actually, are at that point.

It’s a confusing concept, but if you consider that at one time all of matter was in a single point, upon expansion, all places would remain the center of the universe. The fact that the universe is “flat” supports that point greatly.

Man, @ETpro, no offense, but you’ve just got to away from your computer and out of the house for a while. Grab a beer, see a funny movie, plant vegetatables. Your brain is CERN-tainly gonna explode trying to know the unknowable. ;-)

Just read back over my answer and saw that I’ve suceeded in making the question even more confusing.

The problem people have when they visualize the Big Bang is we tend to think of matter being ejected into space. But it wasn’t an ejection of matter so much as an expansion of space. I find it much easier to visualize if I think of the universe as a two dimensional plane in a three dimensional world, like the surface of an expanding balloon. Your question seems to be asking where the center mass of the balloon would be, but that isn’t the right question. That point no longer exists because the balloon has expanded. Instead, ask yourself what point on the surface of the balloon is the center.

Obviously there is no center there, but each point is more or less equidistant (or relatively equidistant) to any other point.

As best I can figure, the geometric center – that is, the point that is equidistant from the sides – could be anywhere you like. If, as present models suggest, the Universe is infinitely large, then any given point would be infinitely far from the edge, and therefore the middle.

you mean it isn’t Lindsey Lohan?

The center of the universe is the center of your minds eye….it just is grasshopper!

@ETpro : And yet, you didn’t reference this question. Hmmmmm.

My belly button. Careful, it can be deep, fuzzy, and smelly in there.

@crazyivan When you think about it, being stuck in 3 dimensions makes what we observe of the universe unworkable. Cosmologists trying to explain curved space-time often use a balloon analogy. If you had a balloon with dots on its surface representing galaxies, and you started inflating the balloon, each dot would move away from all others, and the most distant ones would move at the greatest pace. But the ones moving away at the greatest pace would be on a polar axis intersecting the center of the balloon and your particular dot (point of observation. Looking along that polar axis in the other direction (away from balloon central), you would see nearly empty space. We do not see that. Isn’t this strong evidence for more then 3 dimensions?

@Austinlad These thoughts are my favorite intoxicants. But I love a good beer too, so if you’re buying, I’m ready for therapy.

@Nullo We know the Universe to not be infinitely large. See the discussion thread here.

@filmfann Ha! You definitely win the humor award for this one.

@Cruiser So, anyone want to pay Grasshopper here to relocate the Universe for them?

@JilltheTooth Ha! Outstanding link. That answers iot all.

@prolificus Innie or Outie?

@ETpro Sure. The balloon analogy only goes so far. It’s an attempt to demonstrate the difficulty of conceiving of a fourth (or fifth) dimensional curve when you can only perceive 3 dimensions.

Can I just throw a spanner in the works and suggest that the universe is infinite because it has no volume. Also suggesting that every point in the universe is the centre.

@Pazza I believe that your second suggestion is probably valid, but do not see how the first one is supported by observed evidence. Here is discussion on why cosmologists dismiss the infinite universe postulate.

Purley speculative on my part, but since you can cut any length into an infinite number of slices, the only conclusion I can come to is that distance is just perceived.

Mathematically, infinite division works on paper. But in the real universe, we run into physical limits. You can’t divide things down smaller than the smallest subatomic particle. You can’t have a half a quark. You also can’t actually vary light infinitely. The Planck Constant defines the smallest possible quantity of any given frequency electromagnetic radiation. Basically, it is one photon. You can’t have half a photon. Light just seems infinitely variable because the Planck Constant is so incredibly small.

http://www.richplanet.net/starship_main.php?ref=7&part=1
http://www.richplanet.net/starship_main.php?ref=8&part=1

@ETpro sort of understand what your saying about smallest measurement being the smallest particle, but if you take the theory set out in the interviews I linked, then a photon is just a pressure vortex looped back into itself like a tornado in a loop, so based on that theory, which I lean heavily towards (as it makes so much sense to me), a photon doesn’t really exist, as for any other particle for that matter (no pun intended).

Just because you can’t have half a particle doesn’t mean that a particle is the smallest measurement.

Also, if you take into account the particle zoo, in the interviews, it would seem John Duffield is suggesting that these are ‘broken/smashed’ particles, as he says they don’t last very long, is that a fair assumption?

So to summerise, if particles are just pressure vorticies in the background field, and the background field has no real substance, does it have volume? If it has no volume, then surely the whole universe exists in a singularity?

@Pazza I only had time to listen to the first talk. Very interesting. I’ll catch the second one tomorrow evening. Thanks for posting them.

Nowhere and everywhere.

The center of the universe can only be where you can see both the end and the beginning.

@mattbrowne That’s kind of what I thought. Where ever you are in it, the most distant objects appear equally far away in any direction. I suppose if you could see far enough in a straight line, you’d be looking right at the back of your own head. How’s that square with your understanding, @kess?

So true, The infinite has no center except to the perspective of the observer, then that becomes the center.

So when you see the back of your head you then say AHA, I am it.

And once you see the back of your head,now you are then open to see from each and every conceivable angle all at once.

@ETpro – Yep, and our 3-D conditioned brains are giving us a hard time to accept this.

Bump. Back when I asked this question, I emailed it to the people at NASA’s Ask a Scientist website. I just now got an answer back from Megan DeCeasar.To clarify, when she says to answer your other questions, she is referring to the ones contained in the details above. Megan’s response follows:

“The current understanding is that there is no center. We cannot point to one place as “where the Big Bang happened”—the Big Bang was an explosion of space, not in space. ”

“To answer your second series of questions: Astronomers have done something very much like what you suggest. They measure velocities of very distant galaxies, which allows them to calculate the distance to those galaxies in 3-dimensional space. They find that distant galaxies (ones that are not gravitationally bound to galaxies in our local universe, for example the Milky Way, Andromeda, or the Virgo galaxy cluster) are all moving away from our location in space, and furthermore that they are moving away in a uniform way—all galaxies at a given distance move away from us at the same speed, and galaxies that are farther away are going faster than galaxies that are closer. This might seem remarkable, but the universe is expanding in such a way that all the galaxies are moving away from each other. That means if you were to leave our galaxy and travel to some other distant galaxy, it would again appear that all the galaxies are moving away from you in a uniform fashion.”

“This all means that the universe is not expanding from a single point. It is expanding everywhere, and anywhere you stand in space will appear to be the center, so there actually is no center.”

I was going to say everywhere, but then the universe kinda revolves around the wife and 4 kids.

WO….. edit… I’ve been here before!

@Pazza I know and deeply respect that universe as well. :-)

@ETpro
Hey there ETpro, just read your last post, and wondered, when space expanded, what did it expand into?
I struggle to conceptualise how, since size is relative,(that is to say, to determine size you first need something to measure an object against) how space has any volume since you would need something else to measure it against? suggesting that space expanded into something?

Also, I was thinking the other day about time, and that it is my understanding that before the big bang there was no time, and that time only came into existence the instant the big bang occurred, if that was the case, I struggle to see how the big bang ever got going since as far as I am aware, for any reaction to take place, you need time?

If that is the case, then whatever caused the big bang to occur needed time also, which at that time didn’t exist?

You are thinking in finite human terms. In those terms, the Universe is impossible. But there it sits in all its grandeur. Was there time before the Big Bang? We truly do not know, because we cannot look beyond the singularity’s event horizon. We have no idea what came before that. It’s entirely possible the Universe is eternal and when it gets horny, it does just what we do, it engages in a really big bang.

@ETpro I’m not personally convinced about the big bang theory, which I think is not not conclusive, and also has some tantalising evidence against it, like galaxies that appear to be mixing together but with totally different red shifts. So until that’s sorted out I’d prefer not to believe that’s how it all started.

I like the horny universe theory though, I can relate t that ;0)
Also not convinced there is such a thing as time yet, or even a tangible universe. Probably more likely a mass lucid dream.

I like the quote, which I believe came from Einstein, where he says something like, reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one.

@Pazza In what universe are we dreaming the dream? Oh, never mind. Even though time doesn’t exist, I haven’t the time to debate it. :-)

@ETpro Thanks for posting that answer from NASA, very interesting.