We may have already worked out that our universe began with the Big Bang, but do we know what happened? Many people think there was a massive explosion that made everything instantly hot and dense then the different fragments expanded and cooled as they sped away. But this theory is completely incorrect, which leads on to another mind-boggling question: Does the universe have a center?
To really get to the bottom of this conundrum let’s first look at what the universe would be like if it did begin from an explosion. When an explosion starts at a point, it rapidly expands outwards. The fastest moving part will move the farthest, so the farther away you are from the center, the less chance there is of any part reaching you. Energy density decreases faster the farther away from the explosion you are, so wherever you are you should be able to work out the center of the explosion.
But, this isn’t the universe that we know. Our universe has the same energies, the same densities, and looks the same at large and short distances. Objects far away don’t seem to be the same age as those closer to us that are moving at a slower rate. We see more objects at greater distances and can see that of everything in the universe; we are at the very center of it. So, does this mean that we were at the heart of the Big Bang too?
No. What we have instead is a theory of general relativity that says there was an expansion rather than an explosion when the universe began. Multiple points were covering a whole region where the universe evolved under the laws of gravity. The Big Bang happened at multiple points at once in a region of space a finite time ago.
There may not be an actual center of the universe as such, as the region of space where the Big Bang occurred could be finite. There’s only so much of the universe that we’re able to observe, so there’s insufficient information to reveal a center if there even was one. And, there’s no single place where the universe started expanding either, only a time it started expanding. If the universe does have a finite size and shape, it seems it’s one that’s immeasurable by us.
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