[jumploops]

“We can’t observe the whole universe, so cosmology is not really about the universe. It’s about the observable patch and the assumptions we make about the rest.”

(paraphrasing George Ellis)

We’re in a bounding sphere, with a radius that’s roughly 46.5 billion lightyears, so any observation we make may be true for our local observable range, but there’s no (known) way to know what’s beyond that sphere.

[wtcactus]

Right, but everywhere we look the universe is roughly the same at same distances, so it’s acceptable to extrapolate.

[mr_mitm]

Even if not, it's still worthwhile to explore everything as far as we can see.

[wtcactus]

Relativity restricts us to explore a very tiny sliver of the universe. We can observe, but we will never be able to interact unless Relativity is completely wrong.

[alfiedotwtf]

This is the thing that blows my mind the most with physics and cosmology