If our galaxy is not at the center of the universe, then why do we see an equal number of galaxies in all?
408049
Current estimates for the size of the universe are that it is so large that light from some parts of it that has been traveling towards us since the moment of the Big Bang still hasn't had enough time to reach us.  Furthermore, the universe is expanding rapidly enough that such light will NEVER reach us.  Therefore, no matter how advanced our telescopes become, humans will never be able to see the most remote reaches of space.
178670
If the universe is infinite, it doesn't mean that everywhere is the center, it means that it has no center. Or, if you mean relative to the existing matter...well, that isn't infinite, and has a defined center.
789137
Galaxies are a collection of billions of star systems (like our solar system) all rotating about one central mass, called the galactic center.   They are the largest "structures" in the universe, and there are as many galaxies out there as there are stars you can see in the night time sky.
594695
The universe cannot have an end, it has to be infinite and completely symetrical. This leads to three possible scenarios for its shape a saddle shape, a spheroid, and a flat plane. Different experiments have led scientists to believe that space is an infintie flat plane. The main reason why we know that if there were edges to space then we would have to me moving towards some objects and away from others. This is not the case as all observed entities are moving away from us. This leads to the assumption of a infinite expanding universe. \n\nAs far as our perception is concerned we are not inside of anything since the universe occupies all of the space that we can observe so the universe is everything. But if somehow you could step out of our universe into a higher dimension you dont know what you would see. There are some theorists who believe our universe is one of many universe. But since there is no way to see out of the universe we may never be able to answer this question. I agree that if you start thinking in this manner it can get quite perplexing\n\nTo the person who said space must have an edge to expand think of a baloon. If we go down a dimension imagine that our galaxy is a penny glued on the surface of a baloon. To us the baloon has no edges at all since we cannot see out into the third dimension, yet the baloon is expanding. So from our vantage point we live on an infinite surface that is expanding and causing nearby pennies to all travel away from us.
475004
It is in all directions.  The expansion of the universe is happening at all points, so there is no center to be found, the reason why we see to 13.7 billion light years in all directions is that is how old the universe is, we can only see to distances that light would have travelled in that amount of time, hence a large 13.7 billion lightyear bubbles around us.\n\nSpace is expanding at all points, thus at each place in the universe this "bubble" will be seen - no one is at the center.
21164
4 In recent centuries astronomers who scanned the heavens with early telescopes noticed some fuzzy, cloudlike formations. They assumed that these were nearby clouds of gases. But in the 1920’s, as larger, more powerful telescopes came into use, these “gases” were found to be something far more immense and significant: galaxies.\n\n5 A galaxy is a vast group of stars, gas and other material rotating around a central nucleus. Galaxies have been called island universes, for each one of them is in itself like a universe. For example, consider the galaxy we live in, which is called the Milky Way. Our solar system, that is the sun and the earth and other planets with their moons, is part of this galaxy. But it is only a very tiny part, for our Milky Way galaxy contains over 100 billion stars! Some scientists estimate at least 200 to 400 billion. And one science editor even stated: “There could be as many as five to ten trillion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.”2\n\n6 The diameter of our galaxy spans so vast a distance that if you could travel as fast as the speed of light (186,282 miles a second) it would take you 100,000 years to cross it! How many miles is that? Well, since light travels about six trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles in a year, multiply that by 100,000 and you have the answer: our Milky Way galaxy is about 600 quadrillion (600,000,000,000,000,000) miles in diameter! The average distance between stars within the galaxy is said to be about six light-years, or about 36 trillion miles.\n\n7 It is almost impossible for the human mind to comprehend such size and distance. And yet, our galaxy is just the beginning of what is in outer space! There is something even more staggering. It is this: So many galaxies have now been detected that it has been said they “are as common as blades of grass in a meadow.”3 About ten billion galaxies are in the observable universe! But there are many more beyond the range of today’s telescopes. Some astronomers estimate that there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe! And each galaxy may contain hundreds of billions of stars! I don't think there's an end in sight.
275416
The universe is said to be expanding,at least in the sense\nthat all of the galaxies are supposed to be drifting farther\naway from each other.That would seem to contradict your notion of a tremendously big circle as there's no gravitational pull binding them together.\n Also,if space is finite...then what's outside the boundaries?
433526
It is not as simple as saying we are moving away from other galaxies.  On average all galaxies are moving away from each other.  Admittedly there are some that move towards each other, like the Andromeda galaxy which is coming straight towards us!!!\n\nThe reason why the expansion of the Universe appears to be accelerating and not slowing is still theoretical.  It is thought to have something to do with a theoretical force known as "anti-gravity".  As you can tell by the name, it has the opposite effect of the normal everday gravity that we experience -  the type that keeps our feet firmly on the ground.  Dark energy, again is theoretical, and could have the properties of anti-gravity, but this is all speculation as it has yet to have been discovered.
727803
The known universe appears to be expanding. This does not mean it actually is expanding.\n\nIt might be gravity, or distortions in space affecting our perception of the universe.\n\nIt might be our misinterpretatons of the observations.\n\nThe observation is, that as we find galaxies farther away, they all are moving away, and the farther out they are, the faster they are moving away from us.\n\nDoes this mean the universe is expanding? Perhaps it means that the big bang occured at our location, thus everything is moving away from us. Yah, right....\n\nPerhaps galaxies that were moving at high speeds towards us, have already passed us, and are now moving away from us.\n\nPerhaps galaxies that are moving at high speeds towards us, have the electromagnetic energy from them shifted so much, that we cannot detect them by normal means. This might mean that there are the same amount of galaxies moving towards us as away from us.\n\nPerhaps, the universe was expanding, but is now collapsing, but it takes 15-20 billion years for the light to reach us, and we can only see that they were moving away 15-20 billion years ago.\n\nLots of maybes.
531320
They really don't. Galaxies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, spiral, elliptical, round, etc. Few are rotating though, and some in different directions. All seem to be moving away from each other, though, as most scientists agree that the Universe is still expanding,thus blowing a few holes in the old "big bang" theories.
1028876
No, it doesn't. The Big Bang is about the LARGE scale structure of the universe and its expansion. On these scales, the Andromeda galaxy is *very* close to us! The 100 Km/sec that the Andromeda galaxy is approaching us is called 'peculiar motion' and a similar motion also happens with a couple of the galaxies in the Virgo cluster (which is also close to us on the scale of Big Bang physics).\n\nOn way to think of this is that the Milky Way and the Andromeda spiral are gravitationally bound along with a few other galaxies to form the Local Cluster. For the Big Bang, it is how the different *clusters* are moving away from each other. Inside of the different clusters, the individual galaxies are orbiting. So other galaxies in our cluster can be moving toward us and some galaxies in other clusters can be also *if* they are orbiting in the right way in their cluster. For clusters more distant than the Virgo cluster, the overall expansion outweighs the peculiar motions of the orbits and everything has a net movement away from us. We still see a spread of velocities within each cluster due to the orbits.
563730
Galaxies are clusters of stars and its planetary systems found in groups across the universe. List of Galaxies can be found in link below. \n\nThey are really far... measured in light years and the distance is increasing as per our expanding universe.
9631
I suppose you are referring to galaxies composed entirely or at least mostly of antimatter. None have been observed. If there were any, it would certainly be coming into contact with large amounts of matter at some sort of boundary. At that point, the collisions of the two would set off gigantic amounts of gamma rays, which we would be able to see. These have not, however, been observed. This is likely due to the fact that, for some reason as yet unknown, the amount of matter has increased hugely in the universe relative to antimatter since the big bang.
763882
A galaxy is a swirling collection of stars. our own Milky Way galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, of which our sun is only one amongst these billions and billions.\n\nA solar system is just a single sun that has planets revolving around it. A galaxy is made up of billions of such suns. And some scientists believe that as many as 25% of the stars could have planets. That means billions and billions of solar systems in our own galaxy.\n\nHere'a a picture of our closest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. It has close to one-trillion stars.\n\nHope this heolps. Cheers\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy
737662
If you just want a short answer, I'll say this: if the universe is infinitely big, then the answer is simply that it isn't expanding into anything; instead, what is happening is that every region of the universe, every distance between every pair of galaxies, is being "stretched", but the overall size of the universe was infinitely big to begin with and continues to remain infinitely big as time goes on, so the universe's size doesn't change, and therefore it doesn't expand into anything. If, on the other hand, the universe has a finite size, then it may be legitimate to claim that there is something "outside of the universe" that the universe is expanding into. However, because we are, by definition, stuck within the space that makes up our universe and have no way to observe anything outside of it, this ceases to be a question that can be answered scientifically. So the answer in that case is that we really don't know what, if anything, the universe is expanding into.\n\nNow, for those of you who want a more comprehensive discussion:\n\nLet me begin by saying that "expanding" isn't really the best word to describe what is happening to the universe, although that is the word that is often used - a word choice which I think leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion regarding what is already a difficult topic! A more accurate word for what the universe is doing might be "stretching".\n\nThe difference between "expanding" and "stretching", for me at least, is that an "expanding universe" conjures up an image where there is a bunch of galaxies floating through space, all of which started at some center point and are now moving away from that point at very fast speeds. Therefore, the collection of galaxies (which we call the "universe") is expanding, and it is certainly fair to ask what it is expanding into.\n\nThe current theories of the universe, however, tell us that this is not the picture we should have in mind at all. Instead, the galaxies are in some sense stationary - they do not move through space the way that a ball moves through the air. The galaxies simply sit there. However, as time goes on, the space between the galaxies "stretches", sort of like what happens when you take a sheet of rubber and pull at it on both ends. Although the galaxies haven't moved through space at all, they get farther away from each other as time goes on because the space in between them has been stretched.\n\nOf course, when we think of space in everyday life, we don't think of it as something which is capable of stretching. Space, to us, just seems like something which is there, and which everything else in the universe exists within. But according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, space isn't really as simple as our common sense tells us. If we want to understand the actual way that the universe functions, we need to find some way to incorporate Einstein's ideas into our mental picture and imagine space as a more complicated entity which is capable of doing things like "bending" and "stretching".\n\nTo help us imagine this, a lot of people have come up with analogies for the universe in which space is represented by something more tangible. For example, there is the analogy with a sheet of rubber (or sometimes a balloon) that I mentioned above. My favorite analogy, though, involves imagining the universe as a gigantic blob of dough. Embedded in the dough are a bunch of raisins, spread throughout. The dough represents space, and the raisins represent the galaxies. (To the best of my knowledge, this analogy was originally proposed by Martin Gardner in his 1962 book Relativity for the Million.) We have no idea how big the dough is at this point - all we know is that it is very big, and we, sitting on some raisin somewhere inside it, are so far away from the "edge" that
784346
well, it's simply that if you measure the speeds of galaxies, and their acceleration, and put all the data together, it shows that, at some point back in time, all the visible stuff in the universe was at the same "point" (it cannot exactly be a point, because that would be of infinite density, and Einstein's equations break down in such conditions).\n\napparently there are some people who seem to believe that God and the Big Bang are incompatible - but this is wrong, and actually quite a few scientists believe in God and simply put Him at the source of the Big Bang.
300537
There is disagreement over whether the universe is indeed finite or infinite in spatial extent and volume. Many astronomers and cosmologists believe the universe is infinite due to recent findings in NASA's WMAP project supporting a flat (therefore infinite) universe\n\nHowever, the observable universe, consisting of all locations that could have affected us since the Big Bang given the finite speed of light, is certainly finite. The edge of the cosmic light horizon is 13.7 billion light years (4.19 Gpc) distant. The present distance (comoving distance) to the edge of the observable universe is larger, due to the ever increasing rate at which the universe has been expanding; it is estimated to be about 78 billion light years (7.8 × 1010 light years, or 7.4 × 1026 m). This would make the comoving volume, of the known universe, equal to 1.9 × 1033 cubic light years (assuming this region is perfectly spherical). The observable universe contains about 7 × 1022 stars, organized in about 100 billion galaxies, which themselves form clusters and superclusters. The number of galaxies may be even larger, based on the Hubble Deep Field observed with the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered galaxies such as Abell 1835 IR1916, which are over 13 billion light years from Earth.\n\nBoth popular and professional research articles in cosmology often use the term "universe" when they really mean "observable universe". This is because unobservable physical phenomena are scientifically irrelevant; that is, they cannot affect any events that we can perceive.