The Universe

I like to understand stuff. Stuff includes the universe. I know, of course, that not even all the cosmologists and physicists in the world combined fully understand the universe....still, I want to understand as much as I can. I’m reaching out to the very scientifically minded Facebook people (especially in the cosmology area) in the hope that someone can help me answer a few questions I have. First, maths mean absolutely zip to me, so if you wish to explain something to me, it must be translated into plain English or I’ll never get it. Second, just so we’re kind of on the same page, and especially if you have not seen this, I ask that you watch the video I will link to here, just so you will understand better what my questions are.

If you are at all familiar with layperson explanations of such things that the professionals give, you have probably seen the analogy of an expanding balloon to explain our expanding universe. I understand that analogy, but it has always left me with a huge question. Galaxies, and glactic clusters. it is explained, are depicted as dots on the surface of the balloon, and as the balloon inflates, all the dots grow further away from each other. So that no matter what dot you might be observing from, you will see the same basic thing....all other dots moving away from you, as though, as Carl Sagan put it, you had committed some cosmic blunder. So far so good.

But what is INSIDE the balloon? It might well be only a case of my being rather daft about that, but I don’t get that part. Then, I watched this video. It further confused me because it depicts, not just galaxies on the outside surface of a balloon, but a sphere FULL of galaxies, galactic clusters, etc. So, which is the more correct way to see “our” universe...are we and everything we can know just as ants crawling about on the outside skin of a vast balloon? Or is “our” universe a sphere, full of such things? And where are we relative to the rest of it?

Thank you in advance, for your enlightenment.

TRB