• Question: Planets orbit stars, stars orbit the galaxy, the galaxy orbits the universe, what does the universe orbit?

    Asked by Ayrton to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 6 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      Hmm, interesting! There might not be anything other than the universe, so in that case it wouldn’t be possible for the universe to orbit anything at all – everything that exists in part of the universe. And I’m not sure galaxies do orbit the universe – they move around inside it, but they don’t have regular paths with the universe (or even its centre, as far as I know) at the central point. It’d be interesting to work out at what points (large and small) the orbiting rule breaks down: do galaxies orbit anything? And satellites orbit planets, but does anything orbit satellites? I haven’t got a clue!

    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      This is actually a really interesting question! For the universe to orbit something, we’d have to think of something ‘outside’ of a universe… which is supposed to be… well, the entire universe and everything. BUT there is has been the idea of a ‘multiverse’ thrown around, which proposes other universes, which has plenty of skeptics and believers who are all looking for evidence. Some of the evidence talked about was whether our universe had collided with another, but nothing has been found.

      Short answer: no idea. I’ll ask the astrophysicists in my department to see if they say anything else 🙂

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