How Big Was the Universe When It Was First Born?

StartsWithABang writes: Looking out at the distant stars, galaxies and radiation in the Universe today, we've been able to determine not only what it's made out of, but how long it's been since the Big Bang: 13.8 billion years. Put all that information together, and you can also figure out how large the observable part of that Universe is today. From our point of view, it appears to extend for 46.1 billion light years in all directions. So what if you extrapolate backwards, to the very end of inflation and the start of the hot, dense state we identify with the Big Bang, and ask how large that 46.1 billion light year "size" was back then? How big would it be? Depending on the particulars of when inflation came to an end, the answer is somewhere between the size of a soccer ball and the size of a city block, no smaller and no larger.

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Re:Article blocked

[AK Marc]

100 years ago, every sport played off horseback was "football". So baseball has as much claim to the name as soccer does. Soccer is the proper term for it because there are almost no sports played which aren't "football". The foot in football refers to the fact you are standing on your feet, and is irrelevant to what body parts you touch the ball with. Football shouldn't be used because it's ambiguous and improper. It's only used now because the non-English speakers demand English use the non-English term. In English, it's soccer. In Spanish, it's futbol. But that doesn't mean that in English we should call it the same thing. The "F" in FIFA stands for soccer (well, the first one). Like the C in CCCP stands for "union" (well, the first one). The English word and the foreign word don't have to match.

But that drives non-English speakers crazy. Like America. America, without context, in English (including British English) means "The USA". In Spanish, the similar word means "The Americas". And the Spanish speakers like to deliberately mis-translate the Spanish word for The Americas" in order to change English to better match the non-English language. That it's mostly successful at this point with soccer doesn't mean we have to put up with it for the deliberate confusion between America and The Americas.

While interesting, ultimately irrelevant - 90% of the world (...) knows Football as being that sport where you kick around a ball, with your feet.

Football is the name for soccer in most languages, but that 90% of the world is saddled with a mis-translation doesn't mean we need to mis-translate it back to English and perpetuate the error. In English, the correct word for that game is soccer, as decided by the soccer clubs in England (home of English). That more foreigners call it something else doesn't mean we need to change the English word for it. The Chinese call cats "mao" (loosely after the sound a cat makes), but that doesn't mean that since more people call a cat mao than cat, we should change the English word for cat.

Re:Article blocked

[AK Marc]

Like golf, cricket, croquet, boxing, wrestling, handball, water polo, darts... All football!

OK, every team field sport. Cricket and croquet would have been considered lawn games, not field games, as would "lawn" bowling, and the derivative tenpin bowling.

Funny how many people hate history because it conflicts with their opinions. Rugby Football League and Rugby Football Union are still the official names for rugby. The "association" was dropped from soccer, mainly as an anti-English aristocracy movement (more anti-English outside England and more anti-aristocracy inside England). http://www.todayifoundout.com/...

But all the retcon you want can't change reality. Soccer is the more accurate word for Association Football in English.