https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-08-03/what-are-the-limits-of-our-universe.

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What are the limits of our universe?

The universe may be infinite, but there are boundaries we will never be able to cross and places we
will never reach, even if we moved at the speed of light

PATRICIA SÁNCHEZ BLÁZQUEZ

AUG 02, 2022 - 21:19 ECT

During the 1920s, a debate about the size of the

universe and the nature of the nebulae – diffuse
objects of which several thousand were
catalogued – raged among astronomers. Some
scientists argued that they were gaseous objects
located within our galaxy and that this made up
the entire universe, while others asserted that
they were actually star systems, similar to the
Milky Way, “island universes” that looked
diffuse in the distance. The argument was settled
by Edwin Hubble, who, using the relation
obtained by Henrietta Swan Leavitt, was able to
measure the distance to the Andromeda nebula,
the only one that is visible to the naked eye from
the northern hemisphere of the Earth. The value
obtained by Hubble was much larger than the
size of the Milky Way, which proved the
existence of other galaxies and dramatically increased the size of the universe.

Astronomical distances are usually determined in light years. A light year is the distance that light
travels in one year; approximately nine trillion kilometers. The diameter of the Milky Way is 900
quadrillion kilometers, and the distance to Andromeda is 22.5 quintillion kilometers. These are huge
distances, even if Andromeda is still part of the group of galaxies we refer to as the Local Group –
that is, our neighborhood. The fact is that the universe is so vast that we cannot see it in its entirety,
because after 13.8 billion years of life, there are some regions whose light has not reached us yet.
The universe that we can see – the known universe – is a sphere whose radius marks the distance
between the regions that emitted the radiation that we observe today as cosmic microwave
background radiation and our planet. If the universe were static, this boundary, what we call the
particle horizon, would be 13.8 billion light years away. However, the distance it much longer: 46
billion light years.

The reason is that the universe is expanding, which Hubble also explained in the article A relation
between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae, published in 1929. Hubble
carefully measured the speeds and distances of a sample of galaxies, showing that they are moving
away from us in all directions, gaining speed as they get farther away. Although Hubble was very
cautious in his conclusions, the implications were clear. Only five years before, the scientist’s work
had dramatically expanded the size of the universe; now, it expanded the universe itself.

A raisin cake is often used as a way to illustrate the expanding universe. When we put the cake in
the oven and it starts to grow, every raisin sees the rest move away. When it doubles in size, two
raisins that initially were a centimeter apart will be two centimeters apart, while those that were
three apart will be six apart. This means that during the same time, the distance between the farthest
raisins will have increased three times more than the distance between the closest ones, that is, they
will have moved away three times faster.

The background radiation was emitted in the early stages of the universe, but its light had to travel
through an expanding universe for 13,800 years before finally reaching us. However, all

this time those regions have continued to move away, and the spots we see in the background
radiation have evolved into galaxies and galaxy groups similar to those around us. If we could stop
the expansion of the universe right now, the light from those galaxies would take another 46 billion
years to reach us. But we cannot stop the expansion of the universe, and we will never be able to see
the galaxies that these specks have become, no matter how long we wait. That is because those
regions move away from us at speeds greater than the speed of light, so the light, no matter how
hard it tries, will never be able to cover the distance that separates it from us. In this sense, the
particle horizon, the known universe, marks the visible limit of the universe’s past, but not the
universe with which we can interact.

Recently we were able to see, in images obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope, galaxies
whose light could have been emitted 13.5 billion years ago. Newly formed galaxies inhabiting a
baby universe, barely 300,000 years old. They are, in a way, pictures of ghost galaxies in a region of
the universe with which we will never be able to interact. Can we say, then, that they are still part of
our universe?

Let us then define the limit of the universe with which we can interact. Within this limit – and as
long as we have enough time – we can still receive the light that the galaxies emit now. This is the
region of the universe whose expansion rate is below the speed of light, and its boundary is 16
billion light years away. That is called the event horizon and it marks the limit of the universe with
which we can exchange information.

The sad news is that if the most accepted models of the universe are correct, the number of galaxies
that we will be able to see in the future will diminish until everything disappears from our sight.
Well, maybe not everything, because not all regions of the universe are expanding. Like the raisins
in our cake, galaxies don’t expand; neither does the Earth, the trees, or we. The local Group we are
in is not expanding and, in fact, because of gravity, the Andromeda galaxy is moving closer to us.
However, this gravity will cause all the galaxies that do not move away to get closer and closer until
they merge into a single one, which will be the only one that the astronomers that inhabit it then will
be able to observe. They will not be able to measure the speeds or distances of other galaxies to
know that the universe is expanding, and they will probably end up thinking, like the astronomers of
the 19th century, that the universe consists of a single galaxy: their own.