The center of the universe would be any point of reference. To me the center of the universe is me. The same goes for you. Earth is the center of the universe for us because it is our point of reference. That is why the universe seems to be the same size in any direction. The Hubble can see the farthest point of the universe and it is all the same distance no matter what direction because it is also a point of reference. In the old days when man believed the Earth to be the center of the universe they were right. For aliens a million light years away they can also claim themselves to be at the center of the universe and they too would be right

How is this for a shocker? In the Hubble deep field we are observing the farthest galaxies in the universe. If there was a Hubble telescope orbiting around a planet in one of those galaxies and it observed the Milky Way the people there would think that our galaxy was one of the farthest in the universe and they too could rightfully claim to be the center of the universe.

http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/observer/hdf/DetailWF4.gif

Yeah,
http://www.sciforums.com/archive/index.php/t-257

but the point of reference is not necesarily the centre

vslayer

The center of the universe can only be defined by a point of reference. There is no true center of the universe. It is all relative.

The centre would presumably be at the point where the 'big bang' occured.

Maybe there was no big bang at all. Read this website about fractal cosmology. If you want to learn what a fractal is go to the "Fun with Fractals" thread.

If you want to learn about fractals go to the "Those Amazing Fractal" thread. They very much pertain to this subject. Also if you are intererested in fractal cosmology read this essay.

http://www.fractalcosmology.com/e-fractal2.htm

We may have it all wrong about an atom resempling a solar system. But atoms very well could resemble galaxies. I don't know if what this web site sais is true but the writer makes some excellent points.

The centre would presumably be at the point where the 'big bang' occured.

Yeah, everywhere is the `centre` of the big bang.

(As in the balloon analogy)

I don't subscribe to the air balloon theory. What if the 'big bang' (if it was) is still occuring? That would mean that the (expanding) balloon is filled with matter (which is expanding) all the way to 'the centre', which is constantly spewing out stuff to be expanded.

Maybe it is like fractals and 'our' universe is just generating itself out of other fractal universes?

Hum,
The main point in the balloon theory is that our 3d space-time is the skin of the balloon.
If matter or something existed `inside` the balloon then it wouldn’t really be part of our space-time – it would be `non-existent`.
Thee was another thread a few weeks ago about why most ppl discarded the steady state theory (to sum up – the theory didn’t fit the facts)

The main reason to say that there is no center to the univese is that we see it as isotropic; the same in every direction. However, the entire universe is larger than the observable universe by about 11 times. While the part that we can see might indeed be the same in every direction, we are unable to say that a section of the universe 150 billion light-years away would have the same appearance.

I swear everytime I see that picture, it reminds me of a negative staining I did in microbiology.