“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
IIRC, we
think the most distant objects we've seen are a bit more than 13 billion light years away. Which means that 13 billion years ago, they were already 13 billion light years away. So . . . if the universe expanded at the speed of light, and 13 billion years ago they were already 13 billion light years away, then the universe must be at least 26 billion years old.
BUT IT'S NOT say the astrophysicists. AHA! INFLATION! Space itself expanded at superluminal velocity, carrying matter with it. This is really not well understood, but trust the astro guys, they know their stuff.
Now . . . ask the astro guys if the universe has a radius of 13 billion light years . . . and the most distant objects we see are pretty much the same distance in all directions - are we the center of the universe?
Crickets . . .
Bottom line is we really still don't know
what we don't know.