This is something that really bugs me. No one talks about the real size of the universe. They talk about the age of the universe times the speed of light, which gives us about 13.7 billion light-years. See for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21iUUe-W8L4
But CMB data constrains the size of the universe to be much larger than that. Really, the radius of the universe is at least 78 billion light-years. Clearly a lot of that is beyond our light cone. You can get this reference by googling "size of universe", but here are the key links.
Pop science version:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html
And the journal article:
Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 201302 (2004)
http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v92/i20/e201302
The universe is much bigger than what we can actually see!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
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