How big is the universe?

[mdemaz]

156 billion light years.
This is an estimation, though.

[AbramIsaac]

Depends on who you ask.

I don't think that it's forever expanding. Isn't the current idea that it's going to expand until it cools, and then it will contract?

[the real slim shady]

thats the accepted idea, but its actually expanding at an increasing rate, so if it carries on like this it will continue to expand to an infinite size but the atoms in the universe will eventually get to the stage that they cannot form stars or any mass, and they will break apart.

That the theory that i go along with anyway most people seem to think that the universe expands for a while, then contracts untill it reaches a certain density then that it explodes again, which would mean that this universe has existed before, and will exist again... but the laws of physics dont really work in line with that, so unless the laws of physics only exist whilst the universe is expanding, and they change during the implosive movement, i dont see how that could work.

tbh i dont know though, and never will.

[UofLCard]

I remember hearing from someone once that scientists may have found the edge of the universe, but they just don't know what is beyond it. It blows my mind what could be there. A parallel universe, perhaps?

But more than likely, the universe is probably quite infinite and just keeps on going on and on.

[DanWS]

One recent theory is that in the centre of every supermassive black hole, which is in the centre of every galaxy, is another universe. It's fucking insane, fascinating, you name it.

I completely believe that it's possible there are an infinite number of parallel universes. I mean just look around you right now, there are numerous dimensions at work that you can't see, and if you didn't know they existed you'd be totally ignorant to them. Yet they're interacting with our "reality" all the time. Take your computer, or your television, or your phone. They're all receiving signals, sending data and operating in ways that we can't see. They're all communicating through different dimensions that we only know about because of the very recent scientific breakthroughs that have been made in the last century, which enable us to detect them. And just to detect them, we need to use machines because we can't detect them ourselves. We're living in the fucking future - we're using robots to communicate back to us the data being communicated by signals operating outside of our realm. Wrap your head around that shit!

We have 5 senses (or let's just say we do for the sake of this point). Anything that operates on a level which none of our 5 senses can detect and we haven't created ourselves, we have no idea about. This is why the number of possibilities about what the universe is and how it works, is limitless. Look at this this way; say you're in a room with someone just chilling, and you've got a cold and your nose is blocked. Now imagine the other person farts but because your nose is blocked you can't smell it. You're there basking in the stench of their fart but you have no idea about it because none of your senses detected it. Now how do we know that there are not an infinite number of things going on around us but because our puny 5 senses can't detect them, we're totally ignorant of? There are endless possibilities to what could really be going on around us. I find it fascinating.

[the real slim shady]

tbh i just have the image of someone farting in a room now

[DanWS]

tbh i just have the image of someone farting in a room now

I'm glad I could be of service.

[Words]

Red Shift, the universe is expanding more and more, getting colder and colder. Once all of the energy is spent the universe will most likely become a vast cold lifeless void of nothing. No light, no planets nothing. The end of time.

[the real slim shady]

Red Shift, the universe is expanding more and more, getting colder and colder. Once all of the energy is spent the universe will most likely become a vast cold lifeless void of nothing. No light, no planets nothing. The end of time.

time will go on, but there will be nothing in it.

[the real slim shady]

this wins on a scale you guys cannot imagine

[the real slim shady]

i just realised the spelling mistake in the topic title...

[12characters]

I'm probably the only person on the planet who doesn't care about space. At all. I don't understand why people are so obsessed with finding other planets, wondering if there's life somewhere other than Earth, wanting to find a planet we could live on, etc. I don't understand what's so fascinating about it.

Really?
I mean, I get that you're not into it nor does it matter to you, but you really can't fathom why others are so interested? Is it that much of a mystery to you?

[mdemaz]

I found a map of the universe online a while ago, I printed it out and just stared at it for hours, it's like a fucking road map.

Apparently, the galaxies that are at the edge of the observable universe 13.7 billion light years away are technically further away now, like 46 billion light years.

That's mainly because in the time it would take for us to get there at the speed of light, the universe would of expanded that far.
But, you also gotta take into account that light speed will take longer then 13.7 billion years to get to where those galaxies are, it would probably take twice as long because of the expansion.

But, let's just say there was no expansion and you traveled at the speed of light or you instantly teleported to the edge of the observable universe, then yeah, 46 billion light years.

Really trippy.

We can only see the past, but the true future is invisible to us out there, something might of went terribly wrong out there and we won't feel it for a long-ass time.

It makes me scared.

[AJS2050]

I'm a believer in the multiple universe theory. Loads of big bubbles exploding into existence via a big bang.

[Doodlebug]

I try not to think about it. To me it's like trying to focus on an ENTIRE forest - rather than one tree.

I do this with work.. when you just tend to your To-Do's one-by-one, it's much easier, but if you sit there looking at the stack sitting in your IN box - well too much stress.