A ha: "More importantly, however we characterize this boundary, the cosmic background microwave radiation shows that conditions of our "local," or observable universe obtain at least to the edge of our light cone, and anything happening beyond that is impenetrable to us.
thank you aha for those explanations that I mostly agree with. re: Background radiation, that of course, while in our light cone, is looking into the past, seeing not what there is now, but was 300 00 years after the beginning. just having Penrose: "Cycles of times " handy, and do not dome of his light cones, life lines go beyond the zero mark into the past, the before the bang?
I see a pattern from the geocentric world view we came to the central sun, then the our Milky Way universe, now realise that our "ALL", (the german version) is not all there is to the cosmos either,