if the universe is expanding is it expanding into eternal nothingness?

Question

just forever and ever nothin.. as far as you go. or will you get to a point and pop back in the other side of the universe, like its a huge spherey thing? (if you know what i mean)

Answer 1

the universe is four dimensional, but if you can imagine a two-dimensional version then it seems to be something like the surface of a sphere. it is this surface that is expanding. the universe is finite in size yet has no center and no edge. nothing, not even space-time, exists "outside" the universe. the big bang was the entire universe and everywhere in the universe was once the big bang.

the earliest light we can observe is the cosmic microwave background. this is from the universe at an age of about 380 000 years old. we observe the cosmic microwave background in every direction we look, but the universe was much smaller then. before that age, the universe was too hot and dense for neutral atoms to exist. the charged nuclei and electrons could not combine, and free electrons scatter light very well. it was then that the universe cooled enough for neutral atoms to form so the universe became transparent.

when the universe was tiny fraction of a second old, its expansion was super-fast. the size of the universe became much larger (it became about one meter across.) in an even tinier fraction of a second. after that, the expansion slowed. beginning about five billion years ago, the expansion has sped up. its expansion is now accelerating.

look here:
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0009F0CA-C523-1213-852383414B7F0147
http://universeadventure.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_cosmology

Answer 2

The Universe is expanding but it is wrong to think of it expanding into anything.

By definition, the Universe consists of everything; there is nothing else. [It is a difficult concept to accept but it is pointless to ask what exists beyond the Universe].
You are probably correct in saying that you would eventually return to your starting point if you took a trip in which you only ever went in a straight line . However, this kind of trip could never actually be completed if the Universe continues to expand - the distances and time required are simply too great (even allowing for the slowing down of time at very fast velocities). If the Universe does eventually stop expanding and does start to contract, then it would be possible to complete the trip but only for a self-sustaining craft that was home to countless generations.
The Universe's fabric is called spacetime and is bent into a sphere expanding from the Big Bang site (think of a balloon expanding - the rubber can be thought of as the 'edge' of the Universe with the inside taking the part of everything else, including us). Nothing exists outside of spacetime, spacetime expands and creates more space for objects to move about in (also masses bends spacetime so it is like a ball moving on a rubber mat).
The balloon analogy is an oversimplification - really it is more like a solid rubber ball expanding with the rubber being the counterpart of spacetime.

The above only really applies if there is enough mass in the Universe to achieve closure i.e. enough mass to completely bend spacetime around on itself into a sphere. There are at least two other possibilities - a flat Universe (which is doomed to continually expand, growing colder and colder until no life, stars or any other heat source die) or a saddle shaped Universe.
Both spherical and saddle shaped universes (the capital U is missing on purpose) could expand forever (either accelerating or eventually at a steady rate) or eventually contract to a Big Crunch (the opposite of the Big Bang). However, in saddle shaped or flat universes, you could never return to your starting point without altering course.

Answer 3

There is a theory that our universe is a part of a greater
universe whose shape is a toroid(i.e., a dough not) and our universe
is on the inside ring, expanding outward thus giving
this universe its hyperbolic shape. Now if our universe
were expanding at a constant rate we would say that it's flat,
expanding but slowing down - spherical, expanding and
accelerating - hyperbolic. So you see, the shape is more
of a mathematical notion than actually physical.
Other notions are that our universe is but a particle within
a far larger universe, which in turn may itself be a particle
in a yet larger universe. But at the same time, the very
particles of this universe may house far smaller universes
which in turn etc., etc.
And there may be physical limits to what can be known,
like the limit to the speed of light as well as a limit to what our
species can comprehend.

Answer 4

That's a good question! Anything you could say would, of course, be pure conjecture and an opinion requiring lots of imagination, because the human race will not be able to produce any vehicle that could traverse such immense distances of space in many lifetimes and countless generations.
I personally think nothing is endless-there is an end to the universe somewhere (maybe like you say, at the beginning). It is something to ponder!

Answer 5

Yep,

The universe is expanding at an every increasing rate. As density is mass / volume and the volume is going up and the mass is constant the density of the universe is heading for a big zero. A state known as heat death.

Answer 6

Hi Jack. Smart question. The Big U is expanding, but it will begin to implode after a certain point of inertia has been reached. As best we can tell now, the whole process will repeat itself. The only other option: an alternate reality universe into which matter will be drawn through the super black hole of all time.

Answer 7

there are two theories on this, one is that we keep expanding until all the systems drift apart into 'nothingness' the other is that it will all collapse back into itself in a implosion.

think that most the brainy people favour the drift apart theory with a formula based on mass and energy, which was too complicated to understand.

Answer 8

I don't think we will ever find out the answer to that question because I don't think they will be able to build a machine that will be able to go for that long your talking trillions of light years away. no one would be able to live that long to monitor it and even if they passed the monitoring from one generation to another I think humans would die out or the earth would have been destroyed before we got anywhere near an answer.

Answer 9

if we started from nothingness and are expanding through nothingness that means we don't exist and all this is nothingness and doesn't matter

Answer 10

As it is impossible for us to get there, there is no way of knowing. For all we know, we are all inside some super-giant alien's jello mold.