No, just asking the question.
What evidence supports the idea that there is no center to the universe?

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

The Big Bang Theory per chance?

For more.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Doesn't the Big Bang theory hold that there IS (or was) a center to the universe? The point from which it all expanded?

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

No, no center. From:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...2005-03&page=2

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

You didn't listen to Dr. Marc with NASA's SpacePlace, did you?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

But a balloon does have a center even while it expands, and a grapefruit has a center.

In fact our observable universe of necessity has us at its center, since we haven't been able to look at it from any other perspective.

EDIT: In fact this Scientific American article seems to confirm that we are at the center of a "cosmic event horizen". Since there is no way to observe anything beyond this horizen, let alone travel there, we effectively are at the center of the visible universe.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

This is why they are called analogies. The balloon analogy is just that. The universe does not require a center.

And, if you were five billion light years this way or that, you would still see as far, as noted in the article. There is nothing special about our location.

Anyway, if you're planning on arguing for Geocentrism, then I'd suggest taking it to ATM.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

And how do we know this?
We're not five billion light years this way or that, and we can't go five billion light years to check. At the moment we're limited to our one planet, and couldn't even get out of a low orbit around it if we wanted to (we would have to build the hardware first).

No, I'm certainly not arguing that everything rotates around the Earth.
I said earlier (in the question of whether Fermi's paradox is useful) that I think our knowledge of cosmology is extremely limited, and I stand by it. There is a lot we just don't know (yet).

Among other things, apparently the idea that there is nothing special about our location in the universe is an assumption that cannot actually be tested at this point, and therefore is not a strictly scientific idea. We can build theoretical structures on top of it as simply the best idea we have at the moment, but we shouldn't declare it to be proven scientific truth.

If the article is correct and there is a "cosmic event horizen" surrounding us, then anything outside it effectively doesn't exist for us and never will, since we can't interact with it in any way. The universe effectively does have boundries, at least as far as we are concerned, and it turns out we actually are at its center after all. Not in a literal, but in a practical sense.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

See here for a discussion of supporting evidence:

cosmological principle

or do a thread search, or ask a question in Q&A, or read up on it.

Define what you mean by "special," then present evidence that this is a "special" location.

What is your definition of "proven scientific truth"?

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

That's like being always at the center of how far you can see on Earth
(disregarding anything that could block your view, of course)

Holds true for any location on Earth, thus doesn't mean anything.

Yes, I probably will want to read up on it somewhat.

Unusual, distinctive, extraordinary, or unique.

I'm not making a claim that we are special here, merely pointing out that the assumption that we are entirely typical seems unfounded since we have severely limited information on what conditions are like elsewhere in the universe. We might procede on the assumption that we are typical, but we should remember that at this point this is a guess, not a fact, and until we can spread out to other areas of our galaxy we really don't know what the typical conditions in the galaxy are, let alone the universe.

Actually I would say there's no such thing as proven scientific truth, and so no one should ever treat a scientific theory or supposed fact as proven absolute truth.
Being only human we have a tendency to take a ball and run with it when we sometimes shouldn't. We should instead always have room in our theories to challenge them and be ready to revise them when better information becomes available.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Actually it's a little different. You can eventually go to other locations on Earth and interact with them. People living there could eventually come to your area.

This cosmological event horizen means that we can never reach any locations outside of it or interact with them - they are already expanding away from us too quickly for us to ever detect or interact with them in any way (because we are limited by light speed).

As such for all practical purposes they may as well not exist.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Still doesn't make our location special.

You are always at the center of the part of the universe observable from your location. At any location.
It's a tautology

Yes, it's a tautology, but it's also a contradiction of the idea that there is no center to the universe. If the idea of the cosmological event horizen is true then for all practical purposes we are at the center of the universe.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Exactly, its like being in a VERY large dark room, with a VERY small flashlight. As you swing your light around you can see an equal distance in every direction. Your are in the center of the circle of light. That DOESN'T mean your in the center of the room.

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But if you can't see or go beyond a certain boundry in the room, and you discover that you started in the middle of the area surrounded by that boundry, then you might very well say that it is the center of the room.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Or your in a very large room.

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But you can't see or interact with the rest of the room in any way - it might not even be there. Of the part you can see or interact with there is a definite center - and it was where you started.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Right, so everyone agrees my ceiling fan is the center of the universe. Gotcha . . . except there will be someone that wants to say London is the center of the universe, or Mars is the center of the universe, or the spiral galaxy in Andromeda is the center of the universe, or . . .

Shouldn't you be taking your Geocentrism argument to ATM right about now?

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser