If the universe is ever exspanding what is it exspanding into?

Answer 1

By definition, the "universe" is everything there ever was, is now, or ever will be. To observe and analyze some thing into which our universe is expanding would require us to somehow leave our universe, along with all of its physical laws that make our existence even possible. Wondering about what's beyond our universe is like standing precisely at the North Pole and asking what lies farther north.

Answer 2

I agree with braxton.

Suppose you have a balloon with an ant crawling on the outside of it. The ant is only aware of two dimensions, which happen to be curved around on each other. The ant can only move in the two dimensions that make up the surface of the balloon. It seems to be infinate in the same way that the earth is really finite, but you can never reach the "edge" of the earth. If the balloon is expanding, there is no way for the ant to comprehend "what it is expanding into" or "where it started" because the ant is not familiar with these thoughts (if an ant has these kind of thoughts at all). The idea of "where it all began" lies inside the balloon which is not something that the ant can possibly fathom because the ant is only aware of the two dimensions in which it is familiar. Basically, we can "probably not" understand the answer to your question with our current way of thinking.

Answer 3

The universe is not expanding in the conventional sense of material radiating out from an initial finite volume into empty space. The balloon analogy is helpful, but it requires one to get one's head around the idea of generalizing this to 3-D in a curved space, and suggests that that is required. It technically is not. Galactic separations in a flat (Euclidian) universe can expand too without having a boundary beyond which there is empty space - provided there are an infinite number of galaxies. In such a universe, galaxies would recede from each other at a rate proportion to their separation at a given time. That's it. It just does that everywhere out to infinity. Get your head around that first. Now, general relativity generalized this idea by introducing the idea of space curving back itself so that such an expansion can occur even in a finite universe. To picture this in 3-D, imaging travelling in a straight line in any direction and ending back at the same point eventually. Being in an expanding universe means that the distance you'd have to travel to do that increases with time. GR allows for infinite hyberbolic (noneuclidian) space too, but I don't want to confuse you!

Answer 4

There are several ideas... one is that it is expanding into nothingness. And by nothingness I mean more vacuum and empty space.

Another idea says that all of the empty space and vacuum actually represents the universe, and only exists because matter warps the fabric of reality, and that the nothings into which it is seeming to expand is actually another aspect of the universe in that it was created by the disturbance in space-time that matter causes. Beyond that vacuum and empty space would be nothing. No matter, no vacuum, no light, nothing. True nothingness in that it is the border of reality, the border of perception that can never be reached, because as you approach it you expand the universe with you.


Tiger Striped Dog MD

Answer 5

That is an excellent question .... one of the "big" questions actually. Always remember to support funding for science and someday we may have a real answer to that very question.

Answer 6

I do not believe that it is expanding. It began from a large # of cosmic eggs which hatched.

Answer 7

The Mind of God!

Answer 8

it is expanding into nothing. it is just continually expanding out into the abyss.