Don’t Let Them Tell You You’re Not at the Center of the Universe

Overbye, Dennis. "Don’t Let Them Tell You You’re Not at the Center of the Universe." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 Apr. 2016. Web. 02 Apr. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/science/dont-let-them-tell-you-youre-not-at-the-center-of-the-universe.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0>

Okay, let’s see if I can explain this: “the universe didn’t start at a place, it started at a time.” And that time? Around 13.8 billion years ago, according to the best cosmological data. However, many people believe the universe started someplace, as if the expansion was like a hand grenade going off and the rest of the universe was made from the shards. This concept is false in the sense that, by definition, the universe already fills all space. Yes, it’s true that everything we see today was once the size of a grapefruit, but technically, that grapefruit was already part of an infinite ensemble with no edge, except one made up of time. Instead, this expansion is over time, which we know is open-ended; we are looking into the past when we are looking out, and the farther back we look, the farther back the past. There is no direction for the future, but the present is the center. In other words: you are the center of the universe. Albert Einstein already discovered this in 1905 when he said that our eyes are time machines, and because nothing travels faster than the speed of light, any information we are receiving are from the past. Everything we feel, see, or hear are from the past. Looking at the moon, one is simply seeing an image of light was reflected from the moon traveling at the speed of light a second ago. And the farther away the object, the longer it takes to arrive. Because all our eyes are slightly different, everyone's universe is different as well. 

Though this article seems only relevant to astronomers and researchers of such, the main message and idea is for everyone: that they are unique. It may not exactly fit much into society, but it is another misconception that has been debunked. Even when we know that what we see is from the past, we have trouble understanding that the universe is not measured by space, but by time. Because we can’t physically touch time or occupy it, unlike space for the most past, it is more difficult to wrap our minds around this concept.

Personally, my mind was boggled. I thought this article was really interesting. At first, I thought it was going to be difficult to understand and boring with difficult terminology, but the author did a nice job of explaining the important information and in making the reader feel special in their own way.