Cosmic zettapan gives a whirlwind tour of the observable universe

Panning out from the local intergalactic neighborhood to the limits of the observable universe, we see the walls, filaments, and voids assembled out of the millions of galaxies comprising some sextillion stars (I call it a “zettapan” because “zetta” is the prefix given to quantities of this magnitude, 10²¹).

This isn’t the whole universe, mind you; some parts may be too far away for light to have traveled to us over the course of cosmic history. The video also hints at limits on what imaging technology can easily tell us about the universe�with the striking shape of those intergalactic slices, and a great emptiness between the bladed of imaged galaxies and the great sphere of bubbling energy-states, a relic of the Big Bang that represents a fundamental limit of space and time.

[NASA video via onorbit.com & Kelly Hatmaker]