The universe is 93 billion light-years across.

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The universe is 93 billion light-years across.  The farthest any human has ever physically traveled is the Moon, about 1.3 light-seconds away.  Sit with the gap between those two numbers, because it is almost incomprehensible.

 Light-seconds versus light-years.  The distance that light travels in a single second—about 300,000 kilometers—is called a light-second. A light-year is the distance light covers in a full year, roughly 9.5 trillion kilometers.  The Moon, our greatest journey, is a mere 1.3 light-seconds out.  The observable universe is 93 billion light-years wide.  To put our achievement in perspective, if the entire observable universe were shrunk down to the size of Earth, the distance humans have traveled from home would be smaller than a single atom.

 And here is the part that stretches the mind further.  That 93 billion light-year width seems impossible, because the universe is only about 13.8 billion years old.  How can it be wider than light could have traveled in that time?  The answer is that space itself has been expanding, and still is, stretching the distances between galaxies faster than light could cross them.  The most distant galaxies we see are now far more remote than they were when their light first set out toward us.

 There is also a humbling limit hidden in that word observable.  The 93 billion light-years is only the part we can see, the bubble of space from which light has had time to reach us.  The universe beyond that boundary could be vastly larger, possibly infinite.  We are looking out from inside a small lit clearing, with no idea how deep the forest goes.

 Yet do not let it make you feel small in a hopeless way.  Take a look in the other direction. We are tiny, slow, and bound to a single rock near one ordinary star.  And still, from that rock, we have measured the size of the entire cosmos, mapped its expansion, weighed its galaxies, and traced its history back nearly to the beginning of time.

 We have barely left home.  However, we have reached the very edge of everything with our minds. Does that gap make you feel humbled by how far we have to go, or proud of how far we can see?


Writer: Binod Kumar Simkhada 
binodkumarsimkhada315@gmail.com

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