Guide to the Cosmos Making the Wonders of our Universe Accessible to everyone Robert L. Piccioni, Ph.D. "Our Universe"

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Galaxies often come in clusters of up to a thousand galaxies. This image shows colliding galaxies. This cluster is so far away that the light which is reaching our telescopes today started its journey millions of years before the first dinosaurs were born. There are 62 factors of ten between the size of our universe and the smallest possible size that can exist, spanning galaxies, the solar system, the earth, a person, a human cell, an atom and a single elementary particle.  The green digits indicate where we have excellent physical theories confirmed by high precision observations. The yellow digits indicate were we believe our theories are still valid, but our instruments are not yet capable of probing. And the red digits indicate where we know our present theories fail and new, more advanced concepts are needed. copyright© 2008 A NASA illustration of the history of our universe showing the period of inflation, the development of stars and galaxies, and accelerated expansion. The space created in the Big Bang expanded at a phenomenal rate in an era we call "inflation". Our observable universe is likely only a small portion of this space. copyright© 20