27 October 2025

Most distant yet

This is remarkable. 
The amazingest thing is that if almost any flavor of the currently favored Inflationary (or "Inflaton Field") theory of cosmic origins is correct, even this incredibly ancient object is in the tiny sliver of this universe that's even theoretically visible to us. When astronomers refer to "the universe" they usually mean the "observable universe," meaning that tiny fraction from which it's even physically possible for light to ever reach us. But the vast space, presumably also full of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and of course unimaginably vast numbers of stars, planets, and life, that isn't ever going to be visible to us could be thousands, millions, even huge numbers we don't even have words for, times the size of what we can see, even in principle. It seems almost impossible that this universe (never mind concepts of the multiverse) is actually infinite, but it is so vast that our minds are simply not gifted by evolution the power to grasp such immensity. 

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