2006-07-06 12:37:26 · 7 answers · asked by apple_sass_20 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
The universe has a radius of 14 billion light years. Now, there is no such thing as beyond our universe as far as our three dimensions are concerned. We can see the universe as the surface of the Earth. Except that the surface of the Earth is 2 dimensional, and Earth itself is 3 dimensional, the universe is the 3 dimensional surface, with the unknown thing that the universe is the surface of being 4 dimensional. How big is the surface of the Earth and what's beyond it? What's beyond it? Are you expecting to walk into the edge of the Earth and fall into nothingness or something? The surface of the Earth is wrapped so that there is no edge to the surface of the Earth (the edge being the place where Earth ends). When you walk in one direction, you will continue to walk forever, you won't come to a place where it's the edge of the Earth. Same for the universe. Now in this case, there's a higher dimension. So what lies beyond our universe (there is no edge) are all in the fourth spatial dimension. And what lies there is unknown.
2006-07-06 13:27:54 · answer #1 · answered by Science_Guy 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
As of 2004, the farthest known object was a high-redshift galaxy located 13.23 Billion light years away from the earth. This is very close to the horizon of visibility beyond which we cannot see objects because (due to the expansion of the universe) their light has not had time to reach us since the beginning of time (~13.7 billion years ago). Incidentally, this is the resolution to Obler's paradox about why the sky is dark at night. Without such expansion, almost every sightline would end on a star.
As for what's "outside", that depends on the large-scale curvature of space in higher dimensions. There might be nothing, or there might not. Nobody really knows. Theoretical physics is doing its best to figure it out, but so far no solid answers are available.
2006-07-06 12:51:55 · answer #2 · answered by keck314 1 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Gravity
2006-07-06 14:44:02 · answer #3 · answered by 22 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
light travels at 186,000 miles in one second!
a light year is how far light can go in a year!
1 million seconds is about 11 days
1 billion seconds is about 32 years
when we look far out in space we see about 10 to 15 billion light years away and all we see is Galaxy after Galaxy in any direction all having billions of stars just like our SUN!!
2006-07-06 12:59:32 · answer #4 · answered by newharley2006 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
What tells you our universe is "confined" to a certain size?
2006-07-06 12:41:50 · answer #5 · answered by Marianna 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Cosmos is all that there is, all that there ever was and all that there ever will be.
2006-07-06 12:47:30 · answer #6 · answered by Jules G 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No one will ever know that.
2006-07-06 12:43:13 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋