Cosmic Journeys
How Large is the Universe? The universe has long captivated us with its immense scales of distance and time. How far does it stretch? Where does it end, and what lies beyond its star fields and streams of
galaxies extending as far as telescopes can see?
That time, when our universe sprung forth, has come to be called the Big Bang. How large the cosmos has gotten since then depends on how long its been growing and its expansion rate. Recent precision measurements
gathered by the Hubble space telescope and other instruments have brought a consensus... That the universe dates back 13.7 billion years. Its radius, then, is the distance a beam of light would have traveled in that time ...
13.7 billion light years. That works out to about 1.3 quadrillion kilometers. In fact, it's even bigger.... Much bigger. How it got so large, so fast, was until recently a deep mystery.
| Episode 05 - How Large is the Universe? |
Go to Cosmic Journeys Home or watch other episodes: