Universe - How big is the bubble & whats on the other side ?

Question

The Universe just how big is it ?

From our view point we can guess that the Universe was created from one big explosion.

Firstly,

1) What was there before this initial explosion.

Secondly

2) If the explosion is spreading outwards then logic says that eventually it will stop at point in the future.
And if so what will be beyond that limit?.


What is out there in addition to our own universe and space in its totality ?

Answer 1

There is nothing else - by definition the UNIverse is everything.
This is one of those questions that really is too much for the human mind.

Before the initial explosion the whole Universe was contained as energy in an extremely small volume (much smaller than an orange). To understand this, you need to read some particle physics which shows the inter-relationship between matter and energy at very high temperatures.

Answer 2

There was nothing before the initial explosion - time is a dimension of the universe and was created with it.

As to the 'explosion': firstly there is no logical reason as to why it should just stop. It is however not a bubble that is expanding in space, rather it defines space in the same way that it defines time. The entire universe does however currently continue to expand - generally everything is moving away from everything else. There are three possible states for the end of the universe: open, closed and stationery. The open universe theory is very popular among scientists who believe that there is not enough matter in the universe to reverse its expansion through gravitational forces. The stationary universe theory is not very popular and requires an extrodinary balance to be achieved. The closed universe theory is believed by people such as myself who reckon that there is enough undiscovered dark matter in the universe to create the necessary gravitational pull to slow the expansion of the universe to the point where it will eventually begin contracting. Such a universe will collapse into one massive singularity or 'black hole'.

Our universe has no physical boundaries and therefore encompasses everthing observable by us. Because time and space are properties of the universe it is not possible for anything to exist beyond it. Many people believe in parallel universes and alternative reality paths continously branching out from one another. I do not believe this to be true and believe that this can be explained in terms of 'the sum over histories' principle which you can do a browser search on if you are interested

Answer 3

If the universe is all we know, it is time, it is space, then before the universe there was nothing, "outside" the universe there is nothing, truly nothing, the universe is expanding into "nothing" and in doing so it is then becoming space and time. "nothing" here means truly nothing, no space, or time.

Secondly, logic does not necessarily say that it will stop at some point in the future. However, the universal expansion is somewhat believed to be dependant on two criteria, and therefore 3 possible outcomes. Gravity as we all know has the power to pull stars together, and working on a larger scale, it can pull the universe to a stand still and make it collapse again. However, the phenomena of dark matter and dark energy now come into play, possibly a repulsive force, an inverse effect of gravitation. It is the observation of far off supernovae and galaxies that are helping us predict how gravity and these relatively unknown forces are balanced.

If... Gravity can overcome repulsive forces. Then the universe will collapse in a singularity with "unknown physics".

If Gravity balances the repulsive forces. Then the universe will continue expanding forever at a steady pace

If the repulsive forces overcome gravity (this has kind of been proven and is widely believed). Then our universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate, gravitationally bound galaxy clusters will continue to move together, however, on the whole the matter in the universe will become more widely distributed and all stellar creation will eventually bleed into nothing...

... so, basically, would the last person out there, please turn off the lights.

Finally, outside our own universe there is no perceivable space or time, this does not rule out other universes at all, but they cannot be perceived to be floating around orbiting our universe so to speak, they may have their own space, time, and physics, who knows.

Answer 4

Since space and time are both laws of physics that only exist within this universe - then whatever is outside it (if anything) is completely and totally beyond our comprehension.

If you did not occupy any space, and were not following any timeline (no past, present or future) then how can you exist at all? It may be possible that you still could - possibly in another dimension etc - but I'm b*uggered if I can imagine that. That's why asking what's outside the universe is academic - we could never understand even if we knew.

In the moments before the big bang a huge amount of matter was compacted down into an unimaginably small "thing" called a singularity. See this dot . - you could fit about 500,000 billion protons onto it (sub-atomic particles). If you then sliced one of those protons into a billion pieces and took one bit, that is roughly the size of the singularity, so small it had no spatial dimensions.

We know this singularity must have existed because we're here - but, again, it existed outside of space and time which only came into existence with the birth of the universe so it's very difficult for us to have any understanding of how it existed and in what form.

It doesn't actually stand to reason that the universe will eventually stop expanding - that is just one theory. It may equally continue to expand eternally, or start to compact down again only to burst back into life and start all over again.

Finally - as to what is out there in addition to our own universe and space in its totality - your guess would be as good as anyones. Maybe many other universes, making up a multiverse, maybe nothing (whatever nothing means).

All good questions - but no answers to any of them, sadly.

Answer 5

Dear Sir:

You ask these questions of the common man walking down the street in Yahoo Questions/Answers.... Yet these questions are the "End All - Questions."

The universe as best we can observe with the very best technologies available to us extends out 40 Billion Light years in all directions from us. That is as far as our best devices can "see." Beyond that our equipment fails to deliver any useful information. So our ability to "know" anything about what lies beyond is ZERO. Maybe in the future some new breakthrough will occur and that limit may be pushed out another ten of fifteen billion light years.

1.) The Earth is some 4 Billion Years old. So we assume that the Big Bang occurred some 4 Billion Years ago. Since there was nothing where the Earth is now, how do you suppose anyone will be able to answer your question about what came before that? Don't be foolish and expect Tom Sawyer to step forward and hand the answer to you on a patch of cloth of leather.

2.) Your supposition is based upon things you have learned and experienced in life here on Earth. Space and the Universe do not fit into that confined set of rules and logic. So, your comment that "logic says..." is not appropriate. We do not know of any end point to Space at this time. And even more foolish is to ask what is beyond something that we don't even know yet.

3.) Unanswerable question because of the limits of reason expressed in Answer 2. Who knows what is beyond "something that you don't know anything about? "

Answer 6

1) It is quite possible that there nothing before the Big Bang. Remember that time is part of the universe and is greatly affected by high densities and masses. In the very early stages of the universe, the density was immense enough to affect time itself.

2) This is wrong. The problem is that the Big Bang was not an explosion in any conventional sense. A typical explosion consists of stuff moving through space. The expansion of the universe is an expansion of space itself. The universe is literally expanding everywhere. No one place is the 'center' of the expansion...in a sense every place is a center for it.

Also, the expansion does not have to stop. To reverse the expansion would take enough matter for the gravity to be able to reverse the motion. It seems that there is not enough to do so. In fact, it appears that the expansion is actually accelerating because of a repulsive aspect of the vacuum.

Answer 7

The Universe may have come into existence as leakage from another reality, another universe operating separately from ours. What was here before? Nothing. It's hard to get your head around that one, but it's true. Remember as humans we have a very limited perception of the world. There may be multiple universes, dimensions and realities beyond what we can imagine now. We are far from knowing all the answers...

Answer 8

Mathematically, your equation is fantastic. Conceptually, you have made an assumption that the universe did no longer exist previously the "massive bang". On what grounds are you able to logically make this assumption? ought to no longer the universe have existed previously the so-called "massive bang" befell? my very very own opinion is this cataclysmic journey in simple terms replaced the universe (or what we are able to make certain of it) into its modern state. What befell earlier than that journey can purely be guessed at. per risk all the difficulty in the universe until eventually now collapsed, created a "massive bang" and re-bigger. per risk this has befell many cases previously - even limitless cases. 0 is a guy made theory, it is not unavoidably a standard sources of the universe. it ought to be fake to anticipate that there must be a initiating. as an occasion, tell me the place a circle starts off or ends with out arbitrarily choosing a commencing element and calling it "0"? In different words, the stated demands an observer to define it.

Answer 9

So why does space have walls? The human mind can only comprehend something if it can be put in a box. Why shoud space be a bubble? The human mind can only comprehend what can be contained, space is infinate. Before this big bang there was a singularity that collected dust, (how it got there, your guess is as good as any) the dust circled round a singularity, gravity pulled it in and everything was created from dust, this dust was compressed to form rock and from there compressed more in a kind of neutron star. The neutron star burst and that was the big bang. The big crunch is only a theory.

Answer 10

These are big questions.

Answers to #1 that have been proposed are (a) a singularity of infinite density, (b) nothing, and (c) God. Of course, "a" and "b" are scientific answers, while "c" is a religious answer.

Personally, I'm a little suspicious of people who claim to KNOW the answers to questions like this.

As far as #2 goes, the latest information indicates that the expansion is accelerating. So it cold go on forever!