You are the center of the universe and science can help you prove it.

*This text was written by a columnist. TecMundo; finally learn more.

You may not know this, but you or at least consider yourself the center of the universe! That’s right, according Big Bang TheoryOur universe, which is most accepted for the beginning of time according to physics, has been expanding in all directions for more than 14 billion years.

This can be proven with the help of telescopes, because in any observed direction galaxies are moving away from Earth as if we were at the center of the universe.

The interesting thing is that this observation is possible from absolutely anywhere. To understand, we can imagine a balloon that takes the shape of a sphere when filled with air. If we draw a few dots on the deflated balloon, we’ll see that when it inflates, the dots move away without getting closer to the others.

This is what happens in our universe. The surface of a sphere has no center or edge, and the universe has no center or edge. Another way to interpret this is to say that the center of the universe is everywhere, so you and everything and people can be the center of all this vastness.

Another interesting fact is that due to the size of our universe, when we observe distant stars and galaxies, we are literally looking into the past. This happens in our daily experience too. In order for something to be seen, the light emitted or reflected by that thing must reach our eyes. So the moment this light hits our eye and is processed, the object emitting it is already emitting another light, and what we see is in the past, if we overdo it.

However, when dealing with the scale of the universe, light from an object (having the highest speed physically possible) can take billions of years to reach us. Hence the concept of light years, which is the distance light travels in one year. This distance is about 65,000 times greater than the distance between the Sun and the Earth, and corresponds to more than 9 trillion kilometers.

When we use telescopes to study distant planets, stars, and galaxies, we are also examining what our universe was like tens, hundreds, thousands, millions or billions of years ago; this corresponds to how long the light from these objects travels to reach us. .

For example, the formation of galaxies like our Milky Way was closer to being explained at the end of 2021, when a group of scientists from different countries managed to observe the formation of possibly the first galaxy in the universe. Named HD1, it was found 100 million light-years from Earth.

Of course, this type of observation requires several types of verification that will come with time, further study and continued observation of this distant region of the universe. A light that has traveled all this time to reach us must be scrutinized and brought in valuable information so that we can better understand the formation of our universe.

Rodolfo Lima Barros Souzaphysics professor and columnist TecMundo. He holds a Master’s degree in Physics and Science and Mathematics Teaching from Unicamp in Public Perception of Science. Available on social networks as @rodolfo.sou