In the past, people thought the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. This was a fairly reasonable idea given what they observed around them at the time.

As science advanced and telescopes developed, however, we realized that the Earth is just a small planet in a massive universe. Many were surprised that not even our own sun revolves around us.

Well, after generations of further research, scientists have found that those people claiming the Earth to be the center of the universe weren’t exactly wrong.

The universe is not intuitive to people, so it may sound weird, but the reality is that everywhere can be seen as the center of the universe, or nowhere.

Edwin Hubble helped to show that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies out there, which, many people thought, helped put the nail in the coffin of thinking that Earth was at the center of the universe.

As he and other astronomers looked out at the other galaxies, however, they found that they were all moving away from us.

In addition, the further they were away, the faster they were going. This applied to all the galaxies observed.

If everything is all moving away from you in the same way, that means that you are at the center of it all.  Or so it seemed.

Today it is fairly common to explain the universe like a balloon that is being inflated. If you draw dots all over the balloon and then blow it up, all of the dots are getting further away from each other, just like all the galaxies in the universe.

Of course, that analogy is not perfect either.

The real restriction here is the speed of light. We can look out in any direction as far back as 14 billion light years since the big bang. If someone were in a galaxy 1 billion light years away from us, they would be able to see 1 billion lightyears further in that direction than we could, and a billion lightyears less in the direction toward us.

You can see an example of how a balloon works similarly to the universe in this quick video:

So, to sum it up, yes it seems that the Earth is the center of the Universe, just like everywhere else.

I know a few people who act like they are the center of the universe.

 

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.