From early childhood, we compulsively and continuously counted the objects in our environment. Whenever we could look at a moonless night sky, we wondered how we might one day count the stars.
The universe is amazingly big. The proper distance—the distance as would be measured at a specific time, including the present—between Earth and the edge of the observable universe is 46 billion light-years (14 billion parsecs), making the diameter of the observable universe about 93 billion light-years (28 billion parsecs).
If the universe is perfectly geometrically flat, then it can be infinite. If it’s curved, like Earth’s surface, then it has finite volume. Current observations and measurements of the curvature of the universe indicate that it is almost perfectly flat. You might think this means the universe is infinite.
With that in mind, it is just mind-blowing to think how many more planets could be populated in our Universe.
Life Probably Exists Beyond Earth
