“All men by nature desire to know” – Aristotle. Philosophy is the freedom of the mind beyond the limits that are set to it. Philosophy is curiosity. It is when the person’s ultimate desire is to know more, wonder, and be conscious of their surrounding with all its aspects and how they came to be. Philosophy permits big questions that may be controversial or taboo like ideas of the origin of life and its meaning or God. There aren’t any prohibited topics in philosophy. Philosophy is an infinite universe of its own. One of the major questions in philosophy is the universe since it is directly related to the origin of life, God. It is made of three types of matter: normal matter (planets, stars, human beings), dark matter, and dark energy, formed after the Big Bang. The major part of the universe is matter that we cannot see (dark matter and dark energy). The questions related to it are countless and its understanding is way beyond man’s comprehension which keeps philosophers and scientists and religions in speculation. Why is the universe in essential expansion? What would happen if it expanded too little, too much, or not at all? How did our perspective of the universe develop with time? Could the point of occurrence of the Big Bang be the real center of the universe? These topics of concern will be thoroughly addressed.
When more space is created, the distance between galaxies increases. This is the expansion of the universe. For instance, if you have a balloon, and you draw spots on it representing the galaxies, the more you inflate the balloon, the farther away the spots become from each other. The main reason for this expansion is the Big Bang which is the enormousexplosion that caused the universe, galaxies, stars... to be scattered all around. If this is right, naturally, it is expected that the expansion will eventually slow down due to gravity. However, what caught physicists by surprise is the fact that it didn’t slow down, instead it increased. This cannot be blamed on the Big Bang because it’s over. Turns out, the universe expands with acceleration which means that the universe expands faster due to a force that was addressed as “repulsive gravity” or “dark energy”. This force is found in vacuum, and it works opposite to gravity meaning instead of attracting objects to the center, it makes them go farther away from each other. Normal gravity is attractive, while repulsive gravity is unattractive. These conclusions are still cases of study today. With these answers, more questions rise: Why is this expansion essential? What would happen if the universe stopped expanding? Or expanded too much?
If dark energy weakens over time but is still mildly capable to oppose gravity, the universe then corresponds to Albert Einstein’s imagination of it 100 years ago. The universe will be static, neither expanding nor contracting, just still. In this case, stars will run out of the gas necessary for their survival, and fewer stars will be born. The universe becomes darker, and black holes start roaming around with the Earth getting engulfed by the sun. The universe reaches its minimum temperature which means that even atoms will stop working. The universe becomes lifeless.
On another note, if dark energy weakens and fails to oppose gravity, gravity takes over and attracts everything to the center. The universe starts shrinking, and galaxies draw together forming one ginormous galaxy, and so do stars until the universe becomes hotter than our sun. Black holes start roaming around exploding stars and engulfing everything and eventually each other forming a mega black hole that pulls the universe into one dense, small, and hot point. The universe ends and closes back to its original point before the Big Bang. Perhaps, it might explode once more birthing a new universe, galaxies, and stars. If dark energy overpowers gravity, gravitational forces will fail to keep clusters together. Stars, atoms, and solar systems will be ripped apart. Moreover, planets and stars will explode. Our universe dies.
Our universe is constantly changing, and so is our perspective to it. Since the beginning of time, humans have always tried to imagine the universe and set a clear understanding of it. We went from Geocentric to Heliocentric to Galactocentric3 to Acentric models of the universe.The Geocentric model was adapted by the ancient Greeks for 1500 years. They regarded Earth as the center of the universe with the sun, planets, and stars revolving around it. It was first set by Eudoxus of Cnidus around 380 BCE and later modified by Aristotle and then refined by Claudius Ptolemaeus in one of his treatise “Almagest” which was released in the second century CE. At the time, when the ancient Greeks were trying to come around the idea of the universe, looking up at the sky and watching the stars above meant that the most logical explanation was that the stars are roaming around the Earth meaning that everything revolves around it as well. This idea explained a lot to them like why the stars rotate around Earth once per day or why planets move different than stars . Moreover, it confirmed a lot of religious beliefs as well regarding mankind as the center of attention of gods and goddesses meant that they (on Earth) would logically be at the center of everything. The Geocentric model was invalidated by Nicolaus Copernicus who revived the Heliocentric model suggesting that the sun is the center of the universe rather than the Earth.
Nicolaus Copernicus was not the first person to suggest the heliocentric model, but since the geocentric model was used for a very long time, the heliocentric model appeared to be a new concept. A thousand years before him, philosophers Philolaus10 and Hicetas11 suggested that the Earth revolves around a fiery object. Two centuries after that, Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos12 suggested that the sun is this fiery object. These theories were overpowered by the geocentric model because nobody was able to answer why the stars never changed positions if the Earth was actually moving. That was when Claudius Ptolemaeus overcame this problem with the geocentric theory. So, looking at the dates, when Claudius Ptolemaeus refined the geocentric model in his treatise “Almagest” in the 2nd century CE, the heliocentric hypothesis was being studied, but he debunked it. Where the heliocentric model was correct in mentioning that the sun is the center of the solar system, it had many inaccuracies. For instance, this model suggested that planets don’t orbit around the Sun in circles but in oval paths called ellipses. Not only that, this theory set the Sun as the center of the universe. In modern astronomy, we have reached the conclusion that the universe does not have a center at all. The heliocentric model offered a lot to science. A century after Copernicus’s theory was released, scientists like Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton used the heliocentric model to make new findings.For a while, it was even considered for our solar system to be the center. However, we have gone from searching for a center to believing that there is no center. After the discovery that the universe is expanding in 1929, modern astronomy reached an understanding that there is no center. The idea of an infinite universe was never considered by ancient Greeks because it was a very farfetched idea.
The center of the universe is a fixed point representing the source of everything in which nothing can survive without it. For example, the sun, being the center of the solar system, is the source of life on Earth. At the start of this research, we presumed the center of the universe is where it all started “The Big Bang”. However, along the way, we reached an understanding that the Big Bang is over. It is but the point where everything started. The way our universe is heading in right now is not directly related to it. This is why the point where the Big Bang happened is not the center. In a universe that does not have fixed extremities, there is not a single fixed point standing either. The galaxies are not fixed. The stars are not fixed either. Everything is constantly changing. Knowing that the universe is constantly expanding and changing and opening up new horizons of questioning and thinking and understanding, the universe is a coordinated system lacking borders and a center. After this research, a new question rises. Is it possible that us, humans, have a consciousness, and this marvelously coordinated universe lacks one behind it all? Perhaps, that consciousness behind the universe is the real center.