Recently, NASA scientists combined data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes to discover the most distant galaxy known to date. The galaxy, named Abell2744 Y1, was formed around 13.2 billion years ago when the universe was extremely young. As the universe is expanding, Abell2744 Y1 is currently closer to 40 billion light years away from us, an astounding distance.
But what does that really mean?
Most of us have trouble visualizing the height of buildings, or the distance it takes to get home from work, let alone things on an intergalactic scale.
This is far as anything on Earth can see. The age of the universe is 14 billion years, so in theory we are unable to observe anything further than 14 billion light-years away. Due to the expansion of space, these objects are now around 46 billion light years away — the limit of the observable universe.
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