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Space

Do we occupy a special place in the universe?

By Michael Brooks

7 May 2008

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

(Image: NASA)

IS OUR spot in the universe somehow special? It is an age-old question, but now there’s a way to answer it once and for all – as long as we’re patient.

Convention has it that our neck of the woods is very ordinary, based on what’s known as the Copernican principle, which states that the cosmos is pretty much the same wherever you go. It suggests space-time is expanding at the same rate in every part of the universe, meaning that the distribution of matter is roughly the same.

Although this makes sense theoretically, nobody has managed to test…

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