Background
The standard big bang model is usually supplemented with cosmic inflation. In inflationary models, the observer only sees a tiny fraction of the whole universe, much less than a billionth (1/109) of the volume of the universe postulated in inflation. So the observable universe (the so-called particle horizon of the universe) is the result of processes that follow some general physical laws, including quantum mechanics and general relativity. Some of these processes are random: for example, the distribution of galaxies throughout the universe can only be described statistically and cannot be derived from first principles.
Read more about this topic: Cosmic Variance
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—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
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