On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Jason Van Patten <[email protected]> wrote:
> However it is theoretically possible to establish a context from the
> center of existence if you assume that such a point exists.
>
You might think so, but by calculating the doppler shift in the light
coming from stars in any direction from the Earth, we know that they
are all red-shifted roughly the same amount. This suggests that the
universe is expanding, meaning that all stars are becoming more
distant from one another at roughly the same rate. Think of it like a
3-d version of the 2-d surface of an expanding spherical balloon. If
you draw a bunch of dots on the balloon when it is only barely filled
and then inflate it further, the dots will all get further apart
without there being any "center point" on the surface that they're
moving from.
--Levi
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