We're closer to the edge of the universe than to the smallest possible thing
Saw a clip of Brian Cox saying something that stuck with me: we're closer to the edge of the universe than we are to the smallest possible thing. Didn't trust my memory on the specifics, so I checked the math before filing it away.
The Planck length, the smallest distance physics can meaningfully talk about, is about 10−35 meters. The observable universe is roughly 93 billion light years across, which works out to about 1027 meters.
Stand at human scale, call it a meter, and count zeros in both directions. Getting down to the Planck length takes about 35 orders of magnitude. Getting out to the edge of the observable universe takes about 27. That's an 8 order of magnitude gap, and it's in the universe's favor.
So Cox checks out. We sit closer, on a logarithmic scale, to the edge of everything than we do to the bottom of reality.
Worth being honest about what this means and what it doesn't. It's not a claim about literal distance, the Planck length isn't "away" from you in any normal sense, you're already at that scale. It's about how many zoom steps separate us from each extreme. By that measure, the universe is the nearer mystery.
Sat with that one for a while.