is there no end to the universe? And if there is, what is on the other side of the imaginary wall?

Answer 1

According to some scientists with too much time to think, the universe has no edge or center, and actually wraps around itself. So, if you went through one "edge", you'd come out another. Kind of like "Asteroids", only not as much fun.

Answer 2

I'm going to give you a rough analogy, a mental picture if you will, of how one may look at questions about the universe like this. Imagine that we have a pile of rags, clothes, and shredded fiber. Imagine that each thread in the pile represents a microcosmic local spacetime, frequently with a beginning and an end. In the pile you could find patches where the threads are uniformly woven, so that we can speak of a general progression of time and space, but often it isn't very clear when it begins or ends, because we have loops and unravelled ends. This particular universe that we're living in is such a large patch of spacetime with well-behaved and reasonably consistent laws of physics. It is not expected to last forever, because even protons will decay in due time. However, then that would merely be the end of this particular piece of well-behaved spacetime fabric. It does not mean there's nothing else. The fallacy in our thinking is that we keep insisting that everything can be put on a neat, straight timeline, like on a railway track from the distant past into infinity. In fact, it requires special circumstances to even have time at all as a physical parameter, it's not something to be taken for granted as a fundamental part of reality. Reality can exist without time.

Answer 3

Well, let's look at it like this:

Scientists and astronomers are in agreement that the fartherest things (objects) that they can presently see
with their most sophisticated optical and radio telescope
equipment are 40 Billion Light Years away in all directions from Earth. Beyond that distance their equipment fails to provide any useful information. So a technical limitation has been reached with our observational equipment. That does not mean that that is the end of the Universe, rather, it just means that with this level of equipment, that is as far as we can see...

Now, i am not sure you fully understand how cotton picking far away 40 Billion Light Years is in MILES, so I suggest an exercise for you that will help you grasp the concept...

There are 6 Trillion Miles in a Light Year.
On a blank hunk of paper,
multiply
6 Trillion Miles
by
40 Billion
= 240 Billion trillion...
Please write that number down using all the zeros.

Now, I grant you that number is not infinity, but for all of my daily usages, it is mighty close. So, for me, space is infinite, and goes on for such a vast distance that I cannot conceive of anything bigger that that.

Chuckle, Chuckle...and you want to know what is beyond that??? As if anyone really knows. No one has ever been there. No one is going there. If by chance they ever went there, they could never come back and tell you about it, because you would be more than 80 Billion Years old (traveling at the speed of light). So, I would not worry to much about the lack of a solid answer to this question. It gets asked over and over again by people that have no concept of the immensity of space and insist on looking at space in terms of Earthbound dimensions (which simply won't work).

Regards,
Zah

Answer 4

Here is one theory nobody else has mentioned.
There is no end to the universe, there was no big bang or beginning, and the expansion of the universe is relative to our position and how we perceive expansion of galaxies that we can observe.

Stephen Hawking now admits this being possible.

Astronomers have now looked to within 500 millions years of the big bang and what they find are galaxies as far as they can see. Modern theories do not allow for galactic formation to occur so quickly. There is not enough time for the space matter to cool and come together.

This means that the universe is much older than 13.7 billion years, which is in conflict with reverse calculations of expansion, or it may have no edge and no beginning.

Answer 5

it seems that there is no end to the universe yet.
the current theory states that the universe is still rapidly expanding, having in fact some sort of wall on its edge.
furthermore its believed that the expansion will not come to an end, since there's not enough energy inside to stop it.

however the term 'whats behind it' does not really work here, since there simply is no such 'behind'.

a 'behind' you might find with a common wall like in some house but in this case the wall is an (infinite) ammount of something without anything behind it, we will never get to know, an can just assume that a 'behind' does not exist.

Answer 6

The universe is not infinite in size, there may be many other universes but they they are all closed and light cannot escape their boundaries so they can't be seen. They all exist in a great void which is the only infinity.

Answer 7

Of course there is no end to the universe, it is infinite.
But if it does, I hope they put up a warning sign, so wayward space travelers won`t fall over the edge.

Answer 8

some people think that when you hit the 'end' of the universe, you'll just pop out at the other side....like it looped you back around. there has to be an outer limit of the universe, for we know it's expanding, and for it to expand suggests a limit on it's fabric.

Answer 9

morph is close but has been playing too many video games.

The universe is like a black hole in that it's gravity warps time and space back in on itself. There is an end to the universe but you can never reach it due to time and space dialation. Outside the universe there is no time and no space.

Answer 10

the current theory is that the universe is kind of like walking around the globe. you walk on the surface, there is no edge on end, you just keep going around. it is hard for us to understand because we only live in 3 dimensions.