if the universe is everything, and it is expanding, what is it expanding into?

Answer 1

good question

Answer 2

Reminds me of an Anishinabe story. It's been a long time and I'm not sure I remember it exactly right.

The elder tells the boy, we are living in the Fourth World and the Fourth World is built on the back of a turtle.

The boy asks the elder, what's the turtle built on?

The elders says son, it's all turtle all the way down.

The actual origin of the story isn't Native American, but for what it's worth a member of the White Earth reservation told to me.

Anyway, there is nothing outside the universe -- no void, no empty space, nothing. Maybe other universes but they are not spatially related to this one. The problem with the question is that it presupposes that there is.

Doesn't sound right, does it? But that's what scientists tell us. Stephen Hawking is fond of telling the turtle story as a way of saying that he knows the explanation doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

In Godel Escher Bach, Richard Hofstadter says that such questions should be answered with the word "Mu," which he translates as your question does not compute.

Answer 3

Whenever I ask my father, who is a physicist, he tells me that question doesn't exist, along with the question: "If universe was created in the Big Bang, what was there before?"... I was so annoyed to hear that answer over and over, but now I think it has to do something with space and time not existing outside our universe...
So, the best answer I can give you is: "You, cant ask that question, that question doesn't exist" :)

Answer 4

A) The universe isn't everything, just everything we know about.
B) Nobody really knows. There are guesses and suppositions based on really complicated mathematics and physics, but there isn't an answer yet.

Answer 5

If we are everything and everything is one and everything is expanding then we're expanding into one ;)

Answer 6

A bigger universe.

Answer 7

Nothing, AFAIK.

Answer 8

large void .