The view from there (cosmology)

[FlFishOn]

I've seen the Hubble Deep Field, got the poster. I've seen the southern Deep Field, taken to confirm the homogeneity of extragalactic matter. Looks like all is equal. We can look out in most any direction and locate a quasar that will be 10+ billion LY distant. By my reckoning , that places us near the center of it all, at a minimum, at the center of the observable universe.

Now move to one of those tiny blue specks on the poster, a proto-galaxy 12 BLY distant. What's the view like? Is it homogenous? How could it be? Is there some relativistic slight-of-hand that fixes this potential asymetry? Where is Hawking when you need him?

[Stu Pidasso]

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Looks like all is equal. We can look out in most any direction and locate a quasar that will be 10+ billion LY distant. By my reckoning , that places us near the center of it all, at a minimum, at the center of the observable universe.


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Does the universe even have a center or edges for that matter? I have always imagined it such that if you looked out from the Milky way in any direction, you would see a younger version of the Milky way(assuming you could somehow see far enough back(which I don't think is physically possible)). Basically the universe is a non orientable object.

If you don't understand what I'm describing, take about 2 minutes and build a mobius strip (http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae401.cfm). A mobius strip is a non-orientable object you can build out of a piece of paper and tape.

Stu

[FlFishOn]

It's building that four dimensional mobius strip, in my mind, where I'm having trouble.

[Metric]

Yes, the simplest relativistic cosmologies are homogeneous and isotropic, i.e. they look the same everywhere.