observable universe
- observable universesearch for term
All that the largest telescope can see. The cosmological theory of inflation suggests that very early on in the history of the universe, just fractions of a second after the Big Bang, the universe went through a period when it was effectively expanding faster than the speed of light. As a result, there may be regions which are within our universe, but are so far away that light emitted there just hasn't had enough time to reach the Earth yet.