I watched CSI when I was a kid and it's upsetting me that you're using the CSI: Las Vegas title while the CSI NY cast is speaking and the CSI Miami lead is closing the meme.
The size of the observable universe compared to the size of the solar system is so large that it makes little difference if the sun or the earth is in the centre. The magnitude of the distances involved are incomparable.
Well technically ☝️🤓, as we rotate around the sun, the max extent of the observable universe changes. If you were on the opposite side of Earth's orbit, you would see one Earth's orbit diameter less than what we can see, if you were to look in the direction of the Earth. So while we are at the centre of what we can observe at this moment, the Sun is at the centre of what we observe overall.
Except this isn't some render distance like in a game. The observable universe means, anything close enough that the light from it has had time to reach Earth since the Big Bang. The observable universe is technically constantly expanding by ~300,000 km/s.
I'm sure historians will see this image in 200 years and write "In the XXI century, people believe the universe was shaped as mix of an eye and a fertilized egg"
I was just thinking what if the universe is actually not expanding, but shrinking, but we're running backwards in time.....But then I thought maybe it doesn't matter.
Except that the Milky Way is a bit above the center, so the solar system (and therefore Earth) is on there twice. That or the Earth is a third of the way across the universe from the Milky Way. It's artistic, but that approach is very misleading since it looks like it's trying to be scientific what with all the labels.
If that's the approach, then the arc of the spiral turns into a circle with the sun at its center and all the planets roughly equidistant from the sun. That's a very confusing way to show our neighborhood in the universe. I think this could be interesting as an art piece, but again, using all those labels makes it look like it's trying to give information. I think it's actively unhelpful if the info is wrong.
It's just supposed to look cool and be interesting. It doesn't have to be "useful", it's not like actual scientific purposes are going to be measuring off images from reddit
I don’t get Redditors. Someone created a unique obviously artistic rendition of the universe and dorks can’t help but say “it’s useless!!! It isn’t scientific!!! Not to scale!!! It is only the observable!!!”
Like, guys, relax. This isn’t what the universe actually looks like drawn to scale and scientists arent referencing this image lmao
I think the size of the cosmic bodies are shown in that size so we know what they are. I was referring to the distance between them with Sun in the center.
If space time does not curve, the universe is infinite. We tried to measure the curvature and the results show it's flat. We can only measure with 99.6% precision though so there's still a chance it curves. But if it does it has to be at least 250 times larger than the observable universe. Otherwise the curverture would have been detected by now.
We estimate the size of the universe using observations of the cosmic microwave background, galaxy redshifts, and models of cosmic expansion, but the true size is unknown and ideally could be infinite.
Crazy man. I remember even as a little kid just pondering if outside what is observable is just infinite space, I mean there’s likely not a wall out there right ?
It would likely either be more of a gradient into non-space of some sort, or you simply would never encounter a border, you would simply loop back around like some video games. No joke. Spheres are not the only shape that can have these properties, extra dimensional shapes can have the same closed looping effect despite seeming different.
There could be "something" outside of the universes' extra dimensional surfaces that we would be stuck "walking upon", but that "something" would probably be incomprehensible from any frame of reference within our universe. Perhaps simply a primordial champagne that universes can coalesce like bubbles within.
I'll be listening for news for a few decades, still. ^^
A german pulp-science-fiction-series sparked my love for SF novels. According to this series, " Perry Rhodan ", which has added a new 63-page-story since 1961 every week, the universe is finite, in that if you fly to any one direction long enough, you will arrive of the "other side" of this universe. every spot on our side marks one spot on the other side. of course, if you keep on flying long enough, you will end up where you started. Similar to moving on the surface of a möbius strip, if you will. Of course, you can bore through, creating a short cut. The problem: staying on the other side for more than XX days is deadly to beings of the opposite site. mystery! will our hero solve it?
If we live long enough, we might discover if models created from SF-authors come close to reality. I'd bet money against the Perry-Rhodan model, but I like the idea. :-)
We don't know that the observable universe is smaller than the entire universe. We can't possibly know since the rest of the universe isn't observable. There's even a fringe theory that it could be smaller than the observable universe because it loops back on itself and distant galaxies may just be images of closer galaxies from billions of years earlier.
I think that is more likely than the idea that it loops back on itself, but it's an interesting possibility to consider. Imagine that we could look around the edge of the universe and see our own galaxy. How would we even know it was ours? We would see a much younger galaxy that was not the same shape or size as our own and it would be full of stars that no longer exist.
The Flatuniversers are coming. Aliens have built a giant wall around the universe to keep control of the other universes (otherwise why cant we see past the observable universe, duh). And our solar system is the center of it all, because we are so special.
And also nowhere. Or rather, the concept of "center" doesn't apply to it. But the center of the *observable* universe is, always and by definition, the observer
I’ve seen it described as being on the surface of an expanding balloon, that was with regard to how no matter where you are the universe appears to be expanding the same way. So supposedly everywhere is indeed the center.
This explanation is meant to show that space is expanding at the same rate in every direction and not "from" a particular point. So no matter where you are in the universe everything seems to be going away from you at the same rate in every direction. In other words, from the observer's perspective it always "looks like" they're at the center of the expansion. But it doesn't mean "everywhere is the center of the universe". Either the universe is infinite, in which case the concept of a "center" simply does not apply to it, or it is finite, in which case there is a true center.
Taking the balloon analogy a bit further, while everything on the balloon is expanding from each other at the same rate in every direction, the balloon itself is finite and does have a true center. In other words, while everywhere can be seen as the "center" of the expansion movement, there is only one true center to the balloon itself.
Not exactly, heliocentric is only for the solar system. The sun isn't even in the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy.
And the universe probably doesn't have a centre, and even if it does its not possible to pinpoint the centre of the universe as we can never see its full extent of it.
Because the universe is effectively infinite, the center of the universe is exactly where the observer is and theoretically you can potentially see the same distance 360 degrees around you. Therefore to any given observer, they are the literal center of the universe.
OPs picture enlarges things closer to us and squishes objects that are further away (showing our sun being in the center and also being the largest object in the photo). So while it creates a cool effect there's no conspiracy and the known universe doesn't look like an iris lol
Edit: I think the comment above me is just saying it was weird that those two posts were side by side so that's a woosh moment for me
But how can a thing be infinite like why and if and why was there a singularity at one point. Like if I die i wish I become a ghost who can wander the universe.
I can’t fathom how people think we’re the only “intelligent” lifeforms in this mess. Those superclusters are made up of trillions and trillions of stars. It’s less likely we’re alone than you are to win the lottery every day for the rest of your life (according to ShitGPT you’re a billion trillion times more likely to win the lottery upon buying a single ticket).
what really gets me is what’s beyond this image. The observable universe is just a limit imposed by light and time. What’s past that? More galaxies? Different physics? A whole other universe? The fact that we can even begin to grasp this, let alone map it, is mind-blowing
The vastness of the universe would break your brain if you ever sat down and really studied it. Thats my theory about why a lot of scientists are somewhat eccentric. Or just batshit crazy.
Zoom out further, and you'll see it is but one of many structures. Continue and you will see it is naught but a mote of dust floating. Go further still, beyond time space and reason and at least, at the largest scale imaginable, at long long last you will see it: OPs Mom.
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u/RPT4STIC Feb 27 '25
"observable"