Random, and rather curious, fact about the history of astronomy:

  In the 1920's it was still not clear to astronomers whether the
Universe had approximately the size of the Milky Way galaxy, or
whether it was much larger than that.

  This is rather baffling, given that even such a modern and innovative
theory (still considered valid today) as general relativity was published
in 1915.

  They knew about other galaxies, of course, but they weren't sure if
they were just small objects in our galaxy, of whether they were large
galaxies of their own, very far away.

  Today we take for granted that the Universe is incomprehensibly larger
than our galaxy, but this has been so for much less than a century.

  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Debate

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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