Question:
Is the universe infinite or expanding?
O-baa-ma
2009-12-21 17:02:43 UTC
Delta-
That's it exactly. I can't wrap my brain around this concept. It is drving me goofy!
Eleven answers:
2009-12-21 19:05:19 UTC
The -observable- universe certainly appears to be expanding... but the question of infinity is a whole separate issue because it includes that which may not necessarily be observable.



You might be interested in reading about Einstein's "cosmological constant." Einstein was not satisfied with the notion that the universe should have a finite beginning and end (as his theory of general relativity suggested).



Basically, according to his earlier theories, the universe would inevitably collapse upon itself. He would not accept this outcome.



The "cosmological constant" was a way of avoiding this problem.



For Einstein, the C.C. was just a shot in the dark. He had no evidence supporting this strange modification to his theory of relativity... yet he reluctantly proposed it anyways. I find it very interesting that a man such as Einstein would place so much faith in an intuitive "gut instinct" that he would be willing to take such an arguably unscientific risk on an idea such as the C.C.



Then again, Einstein was more than a great scientist, he was a genius. He used both logic AND intuition in his pursuit of truth. This is a man who is famously quoted as saying: "God does not throw dice."



Sadly, he did not live long enough to learn that he actually may have been right all along about his Cosmological Constant. Recent discoveries pointing to the existence of 'dark matter' (and other "undetectable" particles) may actually be consistent with Einstein's C.C. modification, and have sparked renewed interest in his theories.



Perhaps the good people at CERN will be able to answer these questions for us sometime next year, assuming their fancy new supercollider does not destroy the fabric of spacetime...
I believe you owe me $5
2009-12-21 19:13:57 UTC
There's a couple different theorys. The first is That the universe started 13.5 billion years ago with the big bang theory, where some hot gas exploded and created the universe. The way we know that the universe is expanding is because of a thing called the Red Shift. When you look into a really good microscope and see other galaxies, you'll notice that some of the galaxies have a reddish tint to them. I won't go to into detail with it, but they get that color from the doppler effect. This means that the galaxies are moving father away from us. Going back to the big bang theory, If you think about an explosion, it has a shock wave. Imagine an explosion with a never ending shockwave. That's what the big bang theory is but the shockwave is creating galaxies.



The second theory is practicaly like the first but instead of a never ending shockwave, gravity from the center of the explosion starts pulling the galaxies back to where it started. This is called the Blue Shift. If you see galaxies with a bluish tint to them, you will know that it is getting closer. And as the galaxies get closer, they move faster. And when they all come together they explode again like the big bang theory. Think of it this way. You have 3 rubber balls and you throw them in the same place at the same time. What happens when they all hit eachother? They go back out the way they came. Scientists think that this has been happening forever and that there was no beginning.
.
2009-12-21 19:17:27 UTC
It's not clear and may never be.



The Cosmological theories based on observations go back and forth. And I can think of a few ways both things could be true -- both infinite and expanding. Plus we may be just a space-time foam bubble of weirdness inside another infinite universe with totally different physics than ours.



My favorite theory is that the universe is an N-dimensional moebius strip or a closed N-dimensional Voroni tesselation.



Not that it matters, anyway. Everybody has their own private experience of the universe. We are lucky to be able to share anything at all.
vorenhutz
2009-12-21 18:48:44 UTC
it could be both. it's definitely expanding. it is either infinite, or so large that for most purposes it makes no difference to assume that it's infinite, for simplicity (believe it or not, that assumption does make things simpler).



perhaps you think that there is a contradiction between the universe being infinite and expanding, but there isn't really. think of the set of whole numbers, (1, 2, 3, 4, ...), that's infinite. now multiply them all by two (2, 4, 6, 8,...), it's still infinite, but there's more "space" between objects. an expanding infinite universe would be like that: always infinite, but the space between galaxies increases with time.
ForestFire0
2009-12-21 17:21:40 UTC
Imagine that the universe exists in four-dimensions and is expanding in four dimensions. Since there is no set "center" of expansion for the universe, this is entirely possible. To make it easier to understand and visualize, let's take everything down a dimension. Imagine a world that exists on the surface of a balloon, populated by 2 dimensional creatures. They can move forward and back and side to side, but not up or down. So their world, the balloon, is finite but also boundary-less. Now imagine the balloon starts inflating. To the creatures living on its surface, everything will start getting farther and father apart, but there won't be any center of the expansion. It might be the same thing with our universe, in three and four dimensions instead of two and three.
Chug-a-Lug
2009-12-21 17:10:31 UTC
Yes, the universe is expanding. It's literally creating new space all the time. The question of whether or not it's infinite is still open to debate. However, all recent research and observations strongly indicate that the expansion of the universe will continue indefinitely, hence it can be said that it's infinite.



CAUTION: Try not to drive yourself goofy by wondering what, if anything, lies *outside* our universe. There are any number of ideas about this, but absolutely not a single shred of hard evidence to support any of them.
Duality
2009-12-21 18:48:50 UTC
we dont know, it depends on the geometry of our universe, if it is open closed or flat. wmap says its most likley flat witch means its expanding towards infinity but you can never get to infinity unless you started at infinity so it will tend towards infinitley big but never get there, also we have a finite ammount of matter and energy so even if it went on until infinite time the universe would be dead
Wolfe
2009-12-21 17:07:43 UTC
The universe is expanding, but is not infinite.
?
2009-12-21 17:59:43 UTC
Y E S
DrDave
2009-12-21 17:06:21 UTC
It is expanding into infinity.
L.T.M.
2009-12-21 19:05:13 UTC
I don't know.



Does anyone really know?


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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