The Astronomer Who Ran Out of Comparisons

In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope pointed its lens at a tiny patch of sky near the constellation Ursa Major — a speck no larger than a grain of sand held at arm's length. Scientists expected to find mostly darkness. Instead, the image revealed over three thousand galaxies, each containing billions of stars, layered behind one another like lanterns receding into an infinite hallway.…