X-Nico

Observable universe

In 2009, a gamma ray burst, GRB 090423, was found to have a redshift of 8.2, which indicates that the collapsing star that caused it exploded when the universe was only 630 million years old.

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According to the theory of cosmic inflation and its founder, Alan Guth, if it is assumed that inflation began about 10⁻³⁷ seconds after the Big Bang, then with the plausible assumption that the size of the universe at this time was approximately equal to the speed of light times its age, that would suggest that at present the entire universe's size is at least 3x10²³ times larger than the size of the observable universe.

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In 1987 Astronomer R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii's Institute of Astronomy identified what he called the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, a structure one billion light years long and 150 million light years across in which, he claimed, the Local Supercluster was embedded.

see also

Olbers' paradox

Poet Edgar Allan Poe suggested that the finite size of the observable universe resolves the apparent paradox.