{"id":403,"date":"2026-02-16T13:39:03","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T13:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.sciencepicker.com\/?p=403"},"modified":"2026-02-16T13:39:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T13:39:03","slug":"how-big-is-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/how-big-is-the-universe\/","title":{"rendered":"How big is the universe?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The stars,\ngalaxies, and planets we talk about are so far away. The starts that seem the\nclose can take tens of thousands of years to reach from the Earth.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The universe<\/strong> is\nhuge. But just how big is it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This could be something that we can never\nknow. Sarah\nGallagher<\/strong> told Live Science that the size of the universe<\/strong> is\none of the common questions of astrophysics. It might be not possible to get\nthe right answer but that doesn’t stop scientists from their research and try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closer an object is in the universe<\/strong>,\nthe easier its distance is to measure, Gallagher said. The sun? Piece of cake.\nThe moon? Even easier. All scientists have to do is shine a beam of light\nupward and measure the amount of time it takes for that beam to bounce off the\nmoon’s surface and back down to Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most distant objects in our galaxy<\/strong> are\nmore complex, Gallagher<\/strong> said. After all, reaching\nthem will take a strong beam of light. And even if we had the technological\nabilities to reflect light that far, who has thousands of years to wait around\nfor the beam to bounce off the universe’s<\/strong> distant exoplanets and\nreturn to us? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists have a few methods for dealing with\nthe most faraway objects in the universe<\/strong>. As stars<\/strong> grow,\nthey change color, based on that color, scientists can estimate how much light,\nand energy, those stars<\/strong> give off. For instance, two stars<\/strong> with\nthe same energy and brightness will not appear the same from Earth if one of\nthem is much greatly far away. The farther one will naturally seem dimmer. The\nscientist can compare the star’s actual brightness with what we see from the\nEarth and use that difference to calculate the actual distance of the star from\nthe earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To know about the absolute edge of the universe<\/strong>? How do scientists calculate the distances to objects that far away? And here things can get complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Source: Pexels<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But by calculating the size of that little\nbubble, scientists can estimate what’s outside of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The universe is 13.8 billion years old. This\nmeans the object whose light has taken 13.8 billion years to reach Earth must\nbe the very farthest object that we can see. You might think that gives us a\nclear answer for the size of the universe: 13.8 billion light-years. But also\nkeep in mind that the universe is continuously expanding at an accelerating\nrate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stars, galaxies, and planets we talk about are so far away. The starts that seem the close can take tens of thousands of years to reach from the Earth. The universe is huge. But just how big is it? This could be something that we can never know. Sarah Gallagher told Live Science that the size of the universe is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-and-astronomy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":788,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}