Does the Universe go on Forever?

1st, it is even now possible the universe is finite. All we know for positive (primarily for positive) is that it is more substantial than we can observe, fundamentally because the farthest edges of the universe we can see really do not look like edges. The observable universe is even now massive, but it has limitations. Which is because we know the universe is not infinitely aged — we know the Large Bang occurred some 13.eight billion yrs back.

That suggests that gentle has experienced “only” 13.eight billion yrs to travel. Which is a whole lot of time, but the universe is big enough that scientists are very positive that there’s room exterior our observable bubble, and that the universe just is not aged enough still for that gentle to have reached us. 

(In a entertaining twist, the universe has expanded given that the Large Bang, so the objects that we see emitting gentle 13.eight billion yrs back are now some forty six billion gentle-yrs absent.)

A few generations of telescopes — COBE, WMAP, and Planck — sought to have an understanding of the shape of the universe. Was it curved like a ball, or flat like a piece of paper? If it were curved, and if we could evaluate the curve, we could function out the sizing of the universe. 

But all three telescopes say the universe is flat, which tells us very little about the sizing of the universe.

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