Please Help Automatic 10 pts!!
2007-10-31 11:01:05 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
well, lets see
Very little is known about the size of the universe. It may be trillions of light years across, or even infinite in size. A 2003 paper claims to establish a lower bound of 78 billion light years on the size of the universe, but there is no reason to believe that this bound is anywhere near tight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
edge of the "visible" universe is about 46.5 billion light years in all directions from the earth; thus the visible universe may be thought of as a perfect sphere with the Earth at its center and a diameter of about 93 billion light years.
Note that many sources have reported a wide variety of incorrect figures for the size of the visible universe, ranging from 13.7 to 180 billion light years
once we understand the shape of the universe, then we could begin to answer your question completely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe
sorry.
2007-10-31 11:09:03 · answer #1 · answered by Mercury 2010 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Astronomers sometimes talk about the "visible Universe" or the "known Universe" to talk about the area of space that it's possible for us to observe. But it's a little more complicated that there just not having been enough time for light to travel to us. As you may know, the farther away something is, the longer light takes to travel to us, therefore the farther back in time we see it. The Andromeda Galaxy, for example, is 2 million light-years away, so we see it as it appeared 2 million years ago. Going farther out, we can see galaxies billions of light-years ago, from a time when the universe was young. If we look far enough away (which we can with our microwave satellites), we can see a time so far in the past that no stars had yet formed, and the entire universe was a big glob of hot fluid and very little structure at all. And here's the problem - before that, the universe was actually dense enough to be opaque to light, so no light can possibly get through. Astronomers call that the "curtain" - there's an impassible opaque wall surrounding us in all directions if you look far enough away (and far enough back in time).
2007-10-31 11:12:21 · answer #2 · answered by told_wife_checking_mail 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The radius of the visible universe is usually reckoned to be between 14 and 15 thousand million light years, so it is nearly 30 thousand million light years from one side to the other.
It's not that there is nothng else outside those borders, it's more that whatever else there might be doesn't have any effect on what happens inside them, so it can be ignored.
2007-10-31 23:18:40 · answer #3 · answered by bh8153 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A classic and Newtonian way to think about it is:That is: edge being how far the farthest star is located.
13.7 billions light years is the radius of known universe.
2007-11-02 10:27:42 · answer #4 · answered by chanljkk 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Unknown....
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/universe_level2/universe.html
2007-10-31 11:10:37 · answer #5 · answered by Bonnie C 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
the universe is constantly expanding at an accelerating rate. there are no known borders and even if there were, they are always growing.
2007-10-31 11:13:06 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
The universe doesn't have borders. There is no edge.
2007-10-31 11:11:41 · answer #7 · answered by Cam 2 · 1⤊ 2⤋
It has none. Once you get out into it, there is no up or down. No north, east, west, or south.
2007-10-31 11:34:10 · answer #8 · answered by Kaori 5 · 0⤊ 2⤋
27 light years.
2007-10-31 11:10:24 · answer #9 · answered by johnandeileen2000 7 · 0⤊ 6⤋