We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

by Jorge Cham

So if all the things in the universe started from a tiny but finite quantum dot and are simply moving through space away from the Big Bang, our horizon should expand faster than the stars and kittens of the universe can move away from us, giving us a longer and longer view. Very quickly, if not already, our horizon would be larger than the entire universe. What would that look like? When our horizon is bigger than the universe, it means that we can see beyond the point where there are no more stars (or were no stars, since what we see happened a long time ago). We’d be looking at a spot that had nothing: an end to the stars. But in every direction we look, we see no end of stars. The universe is still bigger than our horizon, even though 14 billion years have passed since the beginning of the universe. Clearly, there is something not quite correct about this idea that everything in the universe started from a small blob and simply moved outward through static space.