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Well, I'm a mathematician and not a physicist, and so I'm entirely happy with the notion of constants!
I had also thought that the speed of light was constant, from every observer and in every frame of reference - as far as I understand, that's one of the cornerstones of relativity. (But see next paragraph.)
The universe is indeed bigger than we can see, simply because the stretching of space means that distant objects have been able to move further away than the distance light could reach us since the big bang. And this doesn't contradict relativity's "nothing can travel faster than light" notion, because the velocity of light, and velocity in general, relativistically speaking, is a local property. When expansion of space is considered, the whole notion of "velocity" alters.
Apparently the size of the universe (as opposed to the observable universe), is reckoned to be in the order to 10^23 times bigger.
That's quite enough Deep Thought for 12.20am.
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