Dear Magicians,

Last week, Space.com ran a headline declaring, “Experts ask where the center of the universe is.” The accompanying article correctly explains that the universe has no center because space itself is expanding uniformly—an idea grounded in Einstein’s general relativity and the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric, standard cosmology since the 1920s. Yet the headline cynically frames this as if the scientific community is still debating a question settled before most of us were born.

This isn’t harmless clickbait. It subtly erodes public understanding, suggesting that even the most basic features of reality are up for grabs if you ask the right “experts.” It feeds the invidious notion that science is just another opinion—one narrative among many—rather than a disciplined method of knowing. Worse, it distracts from the real frontiers of cosmology: dark energy, quantum gravity, the limits of observational precision. In a world drowning in manufactured doubt, we don’t just need more curiosity—we need better questions. Not ‘just asking questions for its own sake.” But genuinely searching for questions that can be answered, not already answered for clicks and giggles.

Asking for the center of the universe is like searching for the edge of the Earth, the last number in mathematics, or the “north” of the North Pole. These aren’t unsolved mysteries; they’re conceptual errors exposed by clear thinking. The real marvel is that we live in a universe where such ancient confusions have been replaced by questions worthy of our intellect—questions about why the universe accelerates, what seeded its earliest structures, and whether spacetime itself is emergent. That’s where wonder lives—not in the click-chasing shadows of answers we’ve had for a hundred years.

Until next time, have a M.A.G.I.C. Week asking productive questions.

Brian