Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Well, the number of grains of sand on the entire English coastline is 
> "obviously" a pretty damned big number. And the number of subatomic 
> particles in the universe is equally obviously *very* much larger.

  The funny thing about the amount of particles in the universe is that,
if current theories are right, there's no way of knowing how big the
universe is and how much material there is. There's a thing called
cosmological horizon which makes it completely impossible for us to
observe the entire universe, no matter what the means.

  That's where the term "observable universe" comes from: It's everything
inside the cosmological horizon, which is at least in theory possible to
be observed.

  The real size of the universe is completely impossible to know. It
could be just slightly larger than the observable universe, or it could
be staggeringly larger. There's just no way of knowing.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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