Space

When they got to a particular location they would place the pole in the ground and organize their structures and activities accordingly. It seemed to work well for them until, one day, the pole broke. I don’t know anyone today that carries around a pole but I have met several individuals that believe they are the center of the universe.

Almost every culture’s understanding of space relies on some variation of a “center.” Many of our cities going back to ancient Greece and Rome are laid out in an orthogonal grid derived from the cardinal directions (north, south, east, west). In Roman cities the forum would be placed in the center of the city — where the decumanus maximus (the main east west road) and cardo maximus (the main north south road) would intersect. Systems with five cardinal points found in China and parts of Asia pre-date the Greeks and include the center as a fifth cardinal point.

The cardinal directions are also found in Arabic, Native American, Hindu and aboriginal cultures.

I was relieved however when I recently discovered that the center of the universe resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma — yes, Tulsa. The image above is a picture of the Center of the Universe that attracts over 10,000 visitors every year.  There is an acoustic anomaly at the center and any sound you make while standing in the center is amplified in your ears but garbled for anyone standing outside the circle of concrete benches.  Those who understand acoustics are not impressed — it is like standing under a dome — the concrete benches form a focusing mechanism that reflects the sound waves back to the center. There is no evidence that the park designers intended for this to happen; regardless, from now on I will regard Tulsa as the Center of the Universe.