Is the universe infinite ?

Answer 1

This answer really has not been determined and agreed upon by the scienfic community.

I checked Wikipedia and it seem that their figure is 78 billion lights years across. Even if it is finite, its big enough where I wouldn't want to walk it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe#Size_of_the_universe_and_observable_universe

Answer 2

Our Universe Is Not Infinite. It Has It's Limits At Some Point, As Does Every Other Object That Resides Within It. Whether It Is Growing Or Shrinking, I Do Not Know. But, At The Dawn Of Creation, There Had To Be Something Rather Extraordinary That Existed "Outside Of Our Universe". So, Therefore, One Must Assume That "It" Is Still There, Outside Of Our Universe Therefore Giving It A Boundary Of Where "We" End And "It" Begins. Our Universe Does Indeed Cover An Extraordinarily Large, "Seemingly Infinite", Area, But It Is Very Finite Indeed.

Answer 3

The observable universe is finite and is estimated to be 156 billion light years in diameter, that is 78 billion light years from the point at which the Big Bang took place to the edges, in all directions.

There may or may not be an unobservable Universe beyond those edges. but by definition, as we cannot observe it, we will never know about it, will we?

So the observable Universe is very large but finite. The best guestimate as to the number of stars within it is 70 sextillion i.e. 7 x 10^22. That too is very large but finite,

To the nearest order of magnitude, the number of atoms in a typical star is estimated to be 10^57 and the number of atoms within the observable universe is estimated to be 10^79. Even larger but nevertheless still finite,

I cannot help feeling some people use the word "infinite" as an intelllectually lazy way of saying "a big number but I don't know how big".

Equally intellectually lazy is to copy whole chunks of undigested wikipedia text without

(a) taking out the footnote calls, "edit" and other comments. and the captions for and references to diagrams that are not being pasted to Yahoo! Answers

(b) inserting the ^ character to indicate powers of ten. 1033 as cut and pasted needs to be rendered as 10^33 to make any sense.

(c) breaking the text up into short paragraphs to make it more readable.

Answer 4

the universe has become infinite bcoz it is growin day by day!
i hope u have heard the big band theory!

There is disagreement over whether the universe is indeed finite or infinite in spatial extent.

However, the observable universe, consisting of all locations that could have affected us since the Big Bang given the finite speed of light, is certainly finite. The edge of the cosmic light horizon is 15.8 billion light years distant.[4] The present distance (comoving distance) to the edge of the observable universe is larger, due to the ever increasing rate at which the universe has been expanding; it is estimated to be about 78 billion light years[5] (7.8 × 1010 light years, or 7.4 × 1026 m). This would make the volume, of the known universe, equal to 1.9 × 1033 cubic light years (assuming this region is perfectly spherical). As of 2006, the observable universe is thought to contain about 7 × 1022 stars, organized in about 100 billion (1011) galaxies, which themselves form clusters and superclusters. The number of galaxies may be even larger, based on the Hubble Deep Field observed with the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered galaxies such as Abell 1835 IR1916, which are over 13 billion light years from Earth.

Answer 5

According to the big bang theory, the universe began as a rapid expansion of space and time. There are three possible outcomes of the big bang:

#1) The universe will continue expanding forever.

#2) The expansion will slow down and stop.

#3) The expansion will slow down and eventually collapse in a "big crunch"

Regardless of the outcome, the universe is generally viewed as a "closed system" meaning that it is finite.

Another way of looking at this is that space and time did not exist before the big bang, so it follows that if space and time have a "beginning", then it cannot be infinite.

Answer 6

In terms of general relativity, the curvature of the universe is either closed, flat or open. If it is closed, the universe is finite. If it is flat or open, the universe is spatially infinite. Current cosmological research seems to indicate the infinite case looks most probable.

Answer 7

That is a good question and one that is worthy of reflection.

Sometimes I pretend I am in a spaceship and I travel to the edge of the universe. The edge of the universe would be where "space" ends and something else begins. Sometimes I picture it as a solid. I am afraid I am not very imaginative. Maybe you could picture something different and then let me know.

Answer 8

Still the Solar system is yet to be fully understood. At this stage universe still infinite.

Answer 9

Take it as infinite till you leave this world.
Anything may happen at any moment.
But fact is, nothing is infinite on this earth?
How do you predict the infinity of this universe?

Answer 10

I think that the universe is not infinite.

It's a har work this, but the universe is mensurable, the universe has limites, but anybody knows this limits...

You may to read the general theory relativity to answer this questions. There are many divulgative books about this.