Thybo Bredahl

The cardiovascular system, actually, is found in the guts of the chest, behind the sternum (or the breastbone).
However, a part of it is offset left, as you can find out from the photo over. For understanding this, I believe prerequisite knowledge of the heart's basic anatomy is required.
Okay, to start with, I would have to refute Andrew's items vis-a-vis the evolutionary motive and the sternum supplying resistance.
There is absolutely no reason why the guts should be an improved place for the heart to be than the right or the left sides of the upper body. When our body was evolving, characteristics had to fit complicated organs in the most efficient of methods in the little space of a body. Thus, our anatomies are filled with small asymmetries. Some points had to be devote the centre, some items in the left and some things in the proper. The heart is simply in the centre because there happen to be lungs on the either side and therefore, there was no space left on the relative sides in the thoracic cavity.
Regarding the real point you raised about the sternum, Andrew, the heart can be enclosed in a double walled sac named pericardium. The pericardium's primary capabilities are to protect the heart and anchor it to the structures around it, to reduce friction while it beats and to safeguard it from overdilating (or overexpanding). So there is no question of the center pressing against http://morningheart.com . The soreness which would make if your bare cardiovascular system pushed against the sternum would be unbearable.
The movement is limited by the pericardium of the heart. The sternum doesn't.
Now, to know why the cardiovascular is offset to the left slightly, one got to know about the basic functioning of the cardiovascular system and how circulation can be brought about in our body.
The human heart has 4 chambers, specifically the Left Atrium (LA), the Left Ventricle (LV), the Right Atrium (RA) and the Right ventricle (RV). The atria will be the getting chambers and the ventricles will be the discharging chambers.
In mammals, the function of the right side of the heart is to acquire de-oxygenated blood, in the proper atrium, from your body which, via the proper ventricle, is pumped to the lungs for oxygenation then. The left side collects oxygenated bloodstream from the lungs in to the left atrium then. From the still left atrium the b