#Total spaces world of light Patch

#Total spaces world of light Patch

Measuring the universeĬalled the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, this photo was assembled by combining 10 years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky. Just because we cannot see land does not mean we are in the center of the ocean just because we cannot see the edge of the universe does not mean we lie in the center of the universe. However, like that same ship in the ocean, we cannot tell where we lie in the enormous span of the universe. 'This possibly uneven effect on cosmic expansion might be caused by the mysterious dark energy,' ESA stated.Ĭentering a sphere on Earth's location in space might seem to put humans in the center of the universe. Some clusters appeared less bright than expected, suggesting they were not moving at the same rate.

The study measured the X-ray temperatures of hundreds of galaxy clusters and compared that against their brightness. ESA reported on a 2020 study using data from ESA’s XMM-Newton, NASA’s Chandra Space Telescope and Rosat X-ray observatories suggests that the universe is not expanding at the same rate in all directions. These estimations are further complicated by the possibility that the universe is not expanding in an even manner. If inflation occurred at a constant rate through the life of the universe, that same spot is 46 billion light-years away today according to Ethan Siegel, writing for Forbes, making the diameter of the observable universe a sphere around 92 billion light-years. Thus, while scientists might see a spot that lay 13.8 billion light-years from Earth at the time of the Big Bang, the universe has continued to expand over its lifetime. Scientists know that the universe is expanding. The word 'observable' is key the sphere limits what scientists can see but not what is there.īut though the sphere appears almost 28 billion light-years in diameter, it is far larger. Like a ship in the empty ocean, astronomers on Earth can turn their telescopes to peer 13.8 billion light-years in every direction, which puts Earth inside of an observable sphere with a radius of 13.8 billion light-years. 'When it arrives, it tells us about the whole history of our universe.'īecause of the connection between distance and the speed of light, this means scientists can look at a region of space that lies 13.8 billion light-years away. project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement. 'The cosmic microwave background light is a traveler from far away and long ago,' said Charles Lawrence, the U.S.