(June 23, 2014 at 1:15 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Sounds legit but you're forgetting that even the most distant galaxies clump together in clusters. So galaxies are merging all over the place. We are not the center of the universe.
Nothing is implied about the center of universe. Distant galaxies only clump with galaxies near them. They don clump with galaxies near us. We only clump with galaxies near us, we don't clump with distant galaxies. Everywhere it is the same, Gravity dominate over short distances with govern objects in relative proximity of tens or hundreds of millions of light years. Everywhere expansion of universe trumps gravity over long distances of billions of light years.
If you look at galaxies within several million light years, almost all are coming closer towards our Milky Way under the influence of collective mass of all these galaxies, one of which is Milky Way. On a scale of tens to hundred of millions of years, majority of galaxies are still coming closer to us, because most of these galaxies within hundreds of millions of years are still mainly operating under eachother's gravitational influences. But expand the horizon to 5 billion light years, and you find the number of galaxies coming closer to us shrink to insignificance next to the number moving away. This story doesn't depend on the observer being on the Milky Way. No matter which galaxy you are in, the same story will repeat.
