Physicist have a mind blowing implication that seems to undermine a fundamental lesson we all learned in grade school about selfishness: You technically are the center of the universe.
To understand this, first we must remind ourselves that The Universe is continuously expanding since the beginning (The Big Bang). It’s expanding all around us, in all directions, and all the objects in it are accelerating as they move farther and farther apart. – kinda sad really.
We know this is true thanks to The Doppler Effect. You’ve experienced The Doppler Effect if you’ve ever had an ambulance speed past you with its siren blaring. Once the ambulance passes you, the siren suddenly drops in pitch. This happens because the sound waves get stretched as the ambulance travels away from you.
Light waves also behave the same way. If we peer out into space, we can see galaxies look more red because they’re speeding away from us and the wavelengths of light get stretched out toward the red end of the spectrum of visible light.
So why does it matter that the universe is expanding? Because no matter where you stand, it will appear that everything in the universe is expanding around you. So the center of the universe is technically — everywhere.
This little phenomenon is known as the cosmological principle. Whenever you pick a frame of reference that point becomes the center of The Universe. – it’s a 4D thing.
Think of it this way. The sphere of space we can see around us is the visible universe. We’re looking at the light from stars that’s traveled millions or billions of years to reach us. When we reach the 13.7 billion-light-year point, we’re seeing the universe just moments after the Big Bang happened.
However, someone standing on another planet just a couple of light years away from us is observing a completely different sphere of the universe. It’s like lighting a match in a dark room; you are observing the area that the light illuminates and that’s your observable universe.
But someone standing in a different spot in the room will be able to see a different sphere. So technically, we are all standing at the center of our own observable universes.
Now here it gets a lot weirder! If The Universe is infinite it implies that multiple universes exist. Someone could be standing on a planet outside our sphere of visibility from Earth, and when they look through a telescope, they’re seeing an entirely different sphere of the universe illuminated. They can see stars and planets that we can’t. They are living, literally, in a different universe.
This happens all around us but on a much smaller scale. Each person that you know experiences life from their observing bubble since they were born. We all live in a different reality from each other; in a different universe.
What you’ve been seeing, hearing, experiencing had a slight delay to everyone else due to the speed of sound and light. The place you’ve been born into and the sequence of your memories is as unique as your universe.
When you see or experience something, different neurons fire up in your brain based on what that thing reminds you of, from your story.
There is no point of view like yours in The Entire Universe, even if it’s infinite. The way you see reality is as special as you.
That’s why we communicate. To share our different realities and merge them like pieces of a puzzle so we can see the bigger picture.
We might just be one bubble in an infinite soup of other universes.
So, yes. You are the center of The Universe you live in. I am the center in mine. Your kid or mother is the center in their universe. We all live in different realities.
But together our universe is much bigger than the one we are the center of.
Inspired by: MIC;
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