[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction
"Now" as in if I could just teleport there!
The distance between galaxies (that aren't gravitationally bound to each other) increases over time.
Or should I first ask, is there a center?
Probably not. If you inflate a balloon, any point on its surface will move away from any other point on the surface. And yet, no surface point can claim to be central.
Note that in the balloon example, there is of course a central point within the volume of the balloon. This is where the analogy breaks down: In case of the universe, we do not assume the existence of an ambient higher-dimensional space.
But who knows? Maybe the analogy is correct. I don't think we can say. In fact I would even wager that a "center" is more likely... because can you even imagine a real world analogy where something expanding has no center?
If you can't then there probably is some sort of center.
Example: the number line. You might be tempted to say 0 is at the center but… there are an infinite number of things on either side of any number you choose.
Additionally nobody knows if the universe is infinite.
I also stated that no real world analog of a perfect expanding sphere exists. Because we can't imagine an analog it's much more likely that the universe DOES have a center similar to the nozzle.
Try to imagine a real world analog to the expanding geometric sphere without a point of discontinuity. You can't. And because you can't maybe it doesn't exist. Maybe it does. But not being able to imagine a real world analog is slight evidence that there there is a center.
The way to reconcile this paradox is that every person experiences the same thing, wherever they are located in the universe, but each person sees a different surface.
It's far from a perfect analogy, but probably the best way to visualize in human terms.
If that's the case, why isn't the article titled "astronomers just discovered the oldest object in the known universe"?
(But if it really was only 13.5 billion light-years from Earth then you'd be right. In fact it's much further away than that.)