I have heard that we “know” the universe is expanding because everything is moving away from everything else. My question is: if this situation is like ink dots on a balloon, then we should be able to point to the direction of the universe’s center. Which way is that center? – BS
The “ink dots on a balloon” idea provides the answer to your question. In that simple analogy, the ink dots represent stars and galaxies and the balloon’s surface represents the universe. Inflating the balloon is then equivalent to having the universe expand. As the balloon inflates, the stars and galaxies drift apart so that an ant walking on the surface of the balloon would have to travel farther to go from one “star” to another. A similar situation exists in our real universe: everything is drifting farther apart.
The ant lives on the surface of the balloon, a two-dimensional world. The ant is unaware of the third dimension that you and I can see when we look at the balloon. The only directions that the ant can move in are along the balloon’s surface. The ant can’t point toward the center of the balloon because that’s not along the surface that the ant perceives. To the ant, the balloon has no center. It lives in a continuous, homogeneous world, which has the weird property that if you walk far enough in any direction, you return to where you started.
Similarly, we see our universe as a three-dimensional world. If there are spatial dimensions beyond three, we are unaware of them. The only directions that we can move in are along the three dimensions of the universe that we perceive. The overall structure of the universe is still not fully understood, but let’s suppose that the universe is a simple closed structure like the surface of a higher-dimensional balloon. In that case, we wouldn’t be able to point to a center either because that center would exist in a dimension that we don’t perceive. To us, the universe would be a continuous, homogeneous structure with that same weird property: if you traveled far enough in one direction, you’d return to where you started.