Ajitabh Pandey's Soul & Syntax

Exploring systems, souls, and stories – one post at a time

Category: Cosmology, Consciousness and Religion

  • Why We See Only a Fraction of the Universe

    When I was reading about the universe’s age the other night, I stumbled onto a Wikipedia page about the “observable universe,” and it honestly blew my mind. It’s one of those things that sounds like science fiction, the idea that there’s a hard limit to what we can see, and it’s way further away than you’d think.

    If the universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old, you’d assume the furthest thing we can see is 13.8 billion light-years away. But the actual number is about 46.5 billion light-years in every direction. That makes the whole observable universe a giant sphere about 93 billion light-years across. Here is what I discovered about the boundaries of our cosmic neighborhood.

    Observable Edge

    The observable edge, or cosmic horizon, can be thought of as a time-delay boundary rather than a physical wall. It represents the furthest limit from which light has had enough time to travel and reach our eyes since the Big Bang. Everything within this boundary forms a perfect sphere with us at the center. This isn’t because we are in the middle of the universe, but because we are the center of our own perspective. The scale of this sphere is difficult to visualize, but the data gives us a framework for just how much “room” we have to explore.

    So, how is the radius 46.5 billion light-years if the light has only been traveling for 13.8 billion years? While light travels toward us, the space through which it travels is actually expanding. It’s like a runner trying to finish a marathon while the road itself is being stretched behind and in front of them. The light eventually reaches us, but the source of that light has since moved much further away.

    Why the math doesn’t seem to add up

    The reason the edge is so much further away than the age of the universe is because of the way space stretches. A lot of people use the “expanding balloon” analogy to explain this, and it’s probably the best way to visualize it.

    Imagine you have a balloon that hasn’t been blown up yet. You draw two dots on it with a Sharpie to represent galaxies. If you start blowing air into that balloon, the rubber stretches and the dots move away from each other. Now, imagine a tiny ant crawling from one dot to the other. While the ant is walking, the balloon is growing. By the time the ant reaches the second dot, the actual distance it covered is much longer than the distance between the dots when it first started its journey.

    In this scenario, light is the ant. While light is traveling toward us, the space through which it’s traveling is expanding. So, by the time the light from a distant galaxy finally hits our telescopes, that galaxy has been pushed much further away than it was when it first emitted that light.

    The trippy part is that because this expansion is actually speeding up, there are parts of the universe that are basically “dropping off” our map. These regions are moving away from us faster than the speed of light. That doesn’t mean the galaxies themselves are breaking physics; it just means the space between us is growing so fast that light can never bridge the gap. It’s like trying to run up a down-escalator that’s moving way faster than you can sprint. You’ll just never reach the top.

    The first snapshot of the universe

    If we look as far back as possible, to the very edge of that 46.5 billion light-year radius, we find the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). This is essentially the afterglow of the Big Bang.

    For the first 380,000 years, the universe was so hot and crowded that light couldn’t even move; it was like a thick, glowing fog. Eventually, things cooled down enough for light to break free, and that light has been traveling through space for billions of years. Because the universe has stretched so much since then (an expanding balloon analogy), those light waves have been stretched until they became microwaves.

    New problems in 2025

    Scientists are actually in a bit of a crisis over this right now. As of early 2025, data from the James Webb Space Telescope and recent studies from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope have confirmed something called the “Hubble Tension.”

    Basically, when we look at the CMB to see how fast the universe should be expanding, we get one answer. But when we look at actual stars and galaxies today, they seem to be moving much faster than the early data predicted. Research published throughout 2024 and into 2025 suggests we might need “New Physics” to explain the gap, maybe a weird version of dark energy that only existed for a little while right after the universe began.

    It’s a bit humbling to realize that even with our best tech, we’re essentially sitting inside a bubble, looking at a “baby picture” of the cosmos that we’re still trying to fully understand.

    Where does this leave us?

    Realizing that our maps of the universe are still being redrawn is actually pretty exciting. We often think of science as a finished book, but the “Hubble Tension” reminds us that we’re still very much in the middle of the story. The fact that the universe we see today doesn’t quite match the “baby picture” from the CMB doesn’t mean we’re wrong, it just means there’s something massive and invisible still waiting to be discovered.

    At the end of the day, the 46.5 billion light-year edge isn’t a wall, it’s just the limit of our current perspective. We are small observers in a vast, stretching fabric, trying to decode a message that has been traveling for billions of years. It’s a reminder that no matter how much we think we’ve figured out, the cosmos still has plenty of ways to surprise us. Whether the answer lies in new physics or a deeper understanding of dark energy, the search itself is what keeps us looking up.

  • On The Origin of The Universe and Consciousness

    Man has always been a curious creature. This curiosity has led to various questions and which in turn have led to answers in the form of discoveries. One of the thought which has always occupied the human beings is the question of creation of this universe and what prompted it. One of the prominent theories in this regard is Big Bang Theory, which explains how the universe expanded from a high density and high temperature state. This theory of the origin of the universe gained popularity in the 20th century after the theoretical findings were backed by several experimental observations by Edwin Hubble, who defined Hubble’s Law.

    The scientists, philosophers and thinkers in the western world were largely unaware of several existing facts about the origin and creation of universe which were known to the Indian common man through various ancient scriptures. One of the earliest evidence about the origin of the universe is found in the ancient Indian book known as Rigveda. While in general, the Rigveda consists of hymns which mostly discuss cosmology, even while praising the deities. In particular, the 1st and 10th book of Rigveda (Prathan and Dasham Mandal) answers several questions about the origin of the universe and explains the Big Bang in cryptic form. The 16 verses of 90th Hymn in the 10th book of Rigveda is also known as Purusha Sukta (puruṣasūkta). According to the Veda’s “Purusha” is the person who runs “this universe”.

    A very simplified description of the supreme being and the creation of the universe has been explained in “White Paper on Religion of Saints And Radhasoami Faith”, published by Radhasoami Satsang Sabha, Dayalbagh, Agra, India.

    While all these verses and the current scientific theories explains the creation, none explains what prompted it. How did the creation started. God or the supreme being has been described as the one without name, form or demarcation. In my opinion any such entity can only be classified as “Pure Energy” or in other terms – “Consciousness”.

    Although the subject of consciousness has always been drawing attention, but this attention and the associated researches in the area have increased dramatically in the last decade and a half or so. It is highly difficult to explain consciousness, although it is something embedded in all our experiences. In the western perspective the focus is mostly on the outward and in the eastern tradition the focus is on the inwards. As a result of this the western approaches prefer scientific methods. In the eastern tradition, reason is often seen as secondary to the inner experience.

    Dayalbagh Educational Institute (Deemed University), Agra, India has been aggressively pursuing highest level of scientific research in the areas of Consciousness and Quantum Nano Computing via its Quantum-Nano Systems Centre And Centre for Consciousness Studies.

    I will continue sharing the researches done in the field of consciousness in the upcoming posts.