A Kompasiana.com explainer published on 24 October 2026 examines a question that resists easy answers: how large is the universe, really? The article walks readers from Earth outward — to the Sun, to the hundreds of billions of stars of the Milky Way, and then to the galaxies beyond. According to Kompasiana.com, scientists estimate that the observable universe holds hundreds of billions of galaxies, with some estimates putting the figure closer to two trillion.
Each of those galaxies can contain enormous numbers of stars, and many of those stars host planets of their own, the outlet reports. The result is a vast number of places that have never been directly seen.
Why it matters
The scale described by Kompasiana.com is not just a curiosity. It shapes what astronomy can and cannot answer. Because light takes time to travel, every distant object we observe is seen as it was in the past, and because the universe is expanding, some regions are so far away that their light has not yet had time to reach us. That means the portion of the cosmos we can observe may not represent the whole of it.
The explainer also notes a second limit on knowledge. Ordinary matter — the stuff of stars, planets and people — is thought to account for only about five percent of the universe's contents, according to Kompasiana.com. The remainder is dominated by dark matter and dark energy, whose properties are still under investigation. In other words, most of what makes up the universe is something scientists have not yet fully characterized.
Distance, light and the view into the past
Kompasiana.com uses a familiar measurement to convey the problem of distance. Sunlight needs roughly eight minutes to reach Earth. Light from a galaxy millions or billions of light-years away takes correspondingly longer, so when astronomers study such a galaxy they are receiving light emitted long ago. The article describes this as looking at light from the past.
Expansion adds another layer. The outlet reports that the universe continues to grow, and that certain regions lie so far off that their light has not yet arrived. As a result, the observable universe is a boundary set by physics rather than a full inventory of everything that exists.
Dark matter, dark energy and the search for life
The explainer's most striking point concerns composition. Stars, planets and living things together make up a small fraction of the universe's contents, per Kompasiana.com, while dark matter and dark energy account for the rest. The article frames this as a measure of how much remains unknown: the substances that shape most of the cosmos are still being studied.
That abundance of planets also raises the question of life elsewhere. Kompasiana.com reports that the question is reasonable given the number of worlds thought to exist, but that no confirmed scientific evidence of extraterrestrial life has been found to date.
The article closes by noting how much work remains despite progress. Space telescopes have been launched, distant galaxies have been studied, and thousands of planets outside the Solar System have been discovered. Yet open questions persist, including whether something exists that has not yet been imagined or detected.
For readers, the practical takeaway is a clearer sense of the limits of current knowledge: the observable universe has a measurable edge, most of its contents are not ordinary matter, and the search for life beyond Earth has produced no confirmed result. Watch for updates from surveys of distant galaxies and from research into dark matter and dark energy, the areas where the next answers are most likely to come from.
