The Universe, simplified.

Math has proven that there are 46 billion light years between our speck of dust - known as Earth - and the edge of the universe. Or has it? What do we really know? Are we so arrogant to think that we know where the edge of everything that exists, ever, ends? Universe means all of space and time. But we, humans, defined it. How do we know? As stated, it would take 46 billion years, traveling at the speed of light, to discover if you've reached the end of everything that ever existed - based on math. No telescope is powerful enough to see that far. If there was, telescopes simply capture light. Who are we to think that visible reflections define everything that may or may not exist in a universe, or even multi-verses?

You can really go crazy trying to ask yourself if the best and brightest minds who have ever walked on our planet concretely found an answer to this particular mystery. But next time you look up and wonder, while looking at the visible balls of gas burning millions of miles away, if that's all there is... stars, planets, galaxies - think of the following perspective:

There are ants that live in my yard. My third of an acre, of a big subdivision, of a suburb, of a major city, of a country that takes 5 hours to fly across in a jet, which is 1 of 7 continents of 1 planet, contains hundreds of thousands of ants. Of those, maybe a couple of hundred live between the first and second section of sidewalk outside of my front door. No doubt, there is a city built by these ants within this small span. It goes deep into the ground, with tunnels and nests among other ant-like structures. An ant, as we know, isn't exactly an intelligent being when compared to a human. But yet, they have managed to survive and thrive in my yard, and just in this small span of my sidewalk. They have created food lines at times, marching to and from discarded droppings that my kids have dripped after hailing the ice cream man on a hot day. They work together to build passageways in the ground, the exit of which is visible by the mound of dirt from which they make their way into the sunlight. On a sliding scale, they have some level of intelligence. Are they aware that their existence is more than my sidewalk's one stamped section? I'm not sure. If they are, then I wonder if they know about the other colonies at the far edge of my yard. They may. Hell, maybe they've even made a trip out of it to visit a grandparent or two. But I doubt the ants' travel capabilities or life span allows them to experience another yard simply within my eyes' sight, up the block from me. I know that yard exists, but they may not. They definitely don't know that if I get in my car, I can be in another major city within a few hours. And lastly, they're definitely not aware that there are other ants living in countries all around the world, just like they are. I know this because of my human intelligence. When put on the same scale with an ant, there's no comparison.

Yet here we are, the human race, believing that we are the end-all, be-all, know-it-all because of math and what we can see through Hubbell. I assure you, what we see and where we think the universe ends is just our ant-eyed-view of something greater.