• Question: How do we know that the universe is expanding from the centre, not being pulled out from the edges?

    Asked by connorhoad to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      I guess we assume that nothing exists outside out universe, so there wouldn’t be anything to do the pulling!

      It’s like, if something was outside of what we considered to be the universe, then it would be part of the universe because it is in existance…bit of a paradox.

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Oh good question! I guess because we assume that the universe is expanding from an explosion, which starts at the center and pushes outward! If there is nothing out there in space before the big bang, nothing could pull all that mass outward.

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 30 Jun 2012:

      I’m not an astrophysicists, but the Hubble constant is a measure of how fast galaxies are moving away from our galaxy. The Hubble constant for galaxies far away is larger than for one closer, this indicates that the expansion is being driven from the “centre” of the universe.

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