how big is the universe?

p>because, the universe is dynamic. the universe is expanding, and expanding at an accelerating rate to boot. how fast? according to cornell university’s “ask an astronomer”

the satellite mission w.m.a.p. has produced in the past couple of months some new and exciting results! among other things, it has enabled astronomers to calculate the value of the hubble constant. they find a value of 71 km/s/mpc, within 5% of error.

the hubble constant that is being referred to here is the rate at which the universe is expanding. somewhere in that convoluted last statement is the phrase “71 km/s/mpc” which means “71 kilometers per second per megaparsec”. it sounds like some lame ass line from a cheesy ass star trek episode but that is real science talk folks.

a megaparsec is about 1 million x 3.26 million light years and there are about 1.6 kilometers for every mile. after some googling, i have come up with might be an appropriate conversion (but probably not) of 158,822.477 mph. or, 3,811,739.448 miles per day. or, 1,391,284,898.52 miles per year. or, 139,128,489,852 miles per century and so on. and all of that is per one million 3.26 million light years.

for every megaparsec, the universe is speeding up by that much. also, remember this very rough and megaparsecs is actually a measure of acceleration so blah blah blah math stuff. (got better numbers? let us know)

still confused? yes? good. if you’re never confused then you’re never challenging yourself, or something like that. let’s try this another way. for every one million parsecs (megaparsec) the universe is expanding by ~71 km/s. for every two million parsecs the universe is expanding by ~142 km/s and so on. so there is no definitive answer as to how big the universe is. it’s always expanding, kinda like yo momma’s ass. and the further one travels, the faster it is expanding. (again, like yo momma’s ass)

if you’re still confused, check out the video below, it’s pretty good. watch out for 1:30~1:50