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Hubble Ultra Deep Field It’s possible that the universe isn’t uniform past what we can see, and conditions are wildly different from place to place, says Caltech astrophysicist Sean Carroll. “That possibility is the cosmological multiverse. We don’t know if there is a multiverse in this sense, but since we can’t actually see one way or another, it’s wise to keep an open mind.” “Astronomers estimate that the observable universe — a bubble 14 billion light-years in radius, which represents how far we have been able to see since its beginning — contains at least two trillion galaxies and...

In case you haven't been paying attention, it has been a pretty exciting last few years for what astronomers call the "observable universe." It's been a particularly rewarding stretch for Albert Einstein too, even though he died in 1955. For instance, last year astrophysicists made the first observations of gravitational waves, which Einstein, exactly 100 years ago, predicted should exist. These waves, which I won't even try to explain, were observed when two black holes crashed into one another and merged. A black hole is formed from matter so dense, and with gravity so strong, that anything near it -...

Our Universe is an enormous place; that’s no secret. What is up for discussion, however, is just how enormous it is. And new research suggests it’s a whopper – over 250 times the size of our observable universe. Currently, cosmologists believe the Universe takes one of three possible shapes: It is flat, like a Euclidean plane, and spatially infinite.It is open, or curved like a saddle, and spatially infinite.It is closed, or curved like a sphere, and spatially finite. While most current data favors a flat universe, cosmologists have yet to come to a consensus. In a paper recently submitted...