The cosmos is bigger than we thought

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26333/

I for one am not worried about it. the universe was already far too large for me to fathom, why should I be upset that it's now known to be bigger than I couldn't ever imagine?

Emerson White wrote:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26333/

I for one am not worried about it. the universe was already far too large for me to fathom, why should I be upset that it's now known to be bigger than I couldn't ever imagine?

this sort of stuff used to give me panic attacks when I was young.  my culture isn't prone to admitting that some things might not be understandable.

the part that seems weird to me, and it could be due to ignorance, is how an infinite universe is only at least 250 times bigger than the Hubble volume.  wouldn't an infinite universe be infinitely bigger than the Hubble volume?  I guess the "at least" covers that.  but then, maybe the answer lies in the several lifetimes' worth of astrophysics that I'm not likely to ever understand.

Tel, don't question me any further on this, because I surely don't know, but it seems to me that I once read that, to a physicist, infinitude is not the same thing as size.

One my very favorite Bloom County cartoons shows Oliver staring up at the night sky, declaring "it goes on...and on...and on..." in all the panels except the last one, where he is in bed and says "Infinity is an idea best contemplated with the covers tucked firmly around one's toes."