Quote from maxpi:
It is sort of funny but if you examine the assumptions involved in what we think is the size of the universe it is possible to conclude that we actually don't have a clue as to how far away all but the closest stars are. We measure the distance to the closest stars by looking at where they are, then wait 6 months until the earth is opposite where it was relative to the sun and we take another look and use geometry to figure out the distance. Pretty accurate for the few stars that are really close, useless for the trillions of further ones. We assume things about the red shift and expanding universe that we have no way of actually checking in measuring the distances to all the rest of the stuff out there.