Where is the edge of the universe? or is there none?

Question

Serious answers only, please :]
It's for school.

Answer 1

It's believed there is one but it just goes on to nothingness (is that a word?). Some think there is just a vast black space around the universe that is never-ending. I'm not sure where they believe it is though. And this is only what some believe. I don't think it can be proved.

Answer 2

Ah! are you the one I just proposed this as a question for? That school project where you wanted to be original?
If so you will note that I did rate this one's difficulty at 4 out of 5 asterisks. But it is one of my absolute favorite questions.
In answer to this, yes there is an edge to the universe, but not one that you can percieve or imagine. The reason for this is because the universe is expanding in a dimension that you and I cannot comprehend.
That all sounds very smart and technical, but what does it mean?
Well, suppose that there are 2-dimensional ants on the surface of a balloon (2-dimensional meaning that they have length and width, but no height, a drawing is a good example of a 2 dimensional object). Now, if you are to inflate that balloon, then the surface expands, it gets bigger. As a result the ants get farther apart, and it gets wider. The ants cannot understand how it is expanding, but it is. Now, say one of these ants wanted to find the edge of the baloon. He would have no sucess because there is none. He could walk around it in circles forever and never find any edge. We know that the edge of the balloon is the latex, it is the height, but the ant which has no experience with height, cannot understand. The same is true with our expanding universe, except we live in the fourth dimension (height, width, length, and time) and the universe is expanding in the fifth. (well technically it could be argued that we are in the third and it's expanding in the fourth but that's not my oppinion. At any rate, it's expanding in a way that we cannot comprehend.) So while there logically must be an edge of the universe for it to expand, we could never find it. I hope this helps. It is one of the more dificult concepts to grasp.

Answer 3

the universe is defined by all the stuff in it, so the edge of the universe is where there's no more stuff. In the even that the universe is hyperbolic, then there is no edge we can experience because in effect traveling away from any point is also traveling toward it. If this is the case then we are literally living on the edge of the universe. But even if that is so, it could be again curved over yet a 6th dimension, but how the hell are we gonna test something like that?

Answer 4

The edge of the universe is calculated at a radius between 13 to 15 billion light Years.
The Calculation was based on Hubble's constant.
However, this value is most likely only one third of the actual dimension of the Universe.
Hence The Universe is a finite Architecture with definite boundaries.
Einstein stated that the Universe is a finite structure.
At one time itwas observed that the Earth was flat. The observation proved incorrect as we know now that the Earth is spherically shaped.
Today Cosmologists believe that the Universe is FLAT..
If that is the case ,then we could travel on the surface of the Universe and come back on the opposites side.Hence we could travel forever that way.

Answer 5

There are a lot of ways to approach this question; here's one which is compatible with both modern physics and common sense. First, suppose the universe has some definite age, say 15 billion years. (I'm not claiming that's the case, but it's plausible). Then the farthest we can possibly see is 15 billion light years. Hubble telescope is actually theoretically capable of seeing a very bright light source even farther out, for instance 30 billion LYs. Unfortunately there hasn't been enough time for that light to reach us; it will only have travelled half the necessary distance (ignoring, if you don't mind, universe expansion). So there could very well be something out that far, but we'll have to wait 15 billion years to see it. Personally I imagine space, complete with galaxies, goes even farther: 100 billion LY, a trillion LY, who knows?

Perhaps after 100 billion LY (in some direction) our normal space stops and heaven begins, with God presiding over a choir of angels playing harps; or perhaps it's just a vacuum; or perhaps we're contained in something like a fish-bowl on a coffee table in the living room of incredibly huge lizard-like aliens; or perhaps space folds back on itself via some 4th dimension - there is absolutely no way of knowing, if you accept the speed of light and the age of the universe as limiting the scope of our knowledge to 15 billion LYs.

Now, if the question of what exists 100 billion LY out is unknowable and essentially meaningless, from the current scientific point of view, then the question whether it goes on to infinity is even more so.