how big is...?

Question

the universe??????

Answer 1

Hey Sammi:

Nice to meet you.

Well, Ian Ridpath, author of ASTRONOMY, DK Publishing, NY, NY, tells us that the Universe we can "see" is 40 Billion Light Years deep in all directions from Earth. Beyond that distance the very best of our optical and radio telescopes just can't deleiver any useable information to us. So we don't know what is beyond that distance because we can't see any farther out than that.

Now, don't get the idea that Space stops there... It doesn't. We just can't tell you anything about it if we can't see it.

40 Billion Light Years is a HUGE, HUGE distance if you haven't played with those kinds of numbers before. And, while that is not equal to Infinity, it is out there in the ball park of "infinity." No one you know, or their children's children will ever go out that distance from Earth, and there won't be any radio messages from there anytime soon... So it might as well be something like infinity.

Answer 2

Now that's a question. I'm doing about it at school. It's totally incomprehendible basically! Some planets in other solar systems are over 300 light years away - it would take you about 100 billion years to get there travelling faster than anything on Earth - and the expansion is accelerating! (not decelerating like many scintists first thought) Here's something to chew up your mind aswell - you know the Big Bang theory? There is another theory called the string theory which involves looking at the universe in 11 dimensions - we can only comprehend 4, these being lines, lines with direction, 3D objects and time. Woah eh?? x x
Sorry to answer the universe question - I'd love to see how big it is! Like I said, incomprehensible. We are like a tiny drop in the ocean, and almost totally by fluke we are in existence - and there's every fluke possibility again that there could be other life out there, like this planet just discovered! sorry i've rambled hehe, just love astronomy x x

Answer 3

Does the concept of 'big' really apply when talking about the universe? By definition the universe is everything there ever was, is now, or ever will be. In other words as far as science knows there's nothing other than our universe, and the phenomenon of size requires some 'thing' for comparsion. Since there doesn't appear to be any such 'thing,' then we can't realistically talk about the 'size' of the universe.

Mind boggling I know, but right now the only answer available to your question.

Answer 4

It depends how you want to measure it!

The visible Universe has a diameter of about 93 billion light years. This gives it a volume of about 3.4*10^33 cubic light years. The Universe also contains about 100 billion galaxies, which contain an average of perhaps several billion stars each.

Answer 5

hm.......its makes u wonder even more if it does end, wats beyond it if anything? I know that the universe is too large 2 imagine but maybe it does end at some point. This is a very hard question 2 answer but it was a good one also.

Answer 6

Heres Something to think about!

What's on the other side of the universe?

Think about it....there has to be something...even empty space is something..

Answer 7

From what we can see with the latest telescopes, technology, etc. it seems endless. It may end, but we don't have the technology to see that far into space yet.

Answer 8

it is as big u want it to be

Answer 9

Larger than any of us can possibly comprehend.

Answer 10

Nobody really knows.