What are the limits or boundaries of the universe?

Answer 1

Answer (1) There are many theories, and as you can imagine, they are not easily tested. The above answer is generally the inevitable conclusion. But some of the theories are quite fun. Think for a minute about the surface of a globe, like the earth. If you had a super powerful UFO taxi, you could start traveling along the earth's surface, and you could just keep going, as long as you wanted. You would never ever hit any kind of wall. You could go in a straight line (as straight as you can manage on a globe) or twist and turn. You would never reach a point where you are forced to stop. (You'd go up to avoid inconventient things like mountains and skyscrapers). Now you could find yourself back where you started, and you would often cross a path that you traveled before. But nothing would stop you from moving ahead. So we can say that the surface of the globe is finite, there is only so much area on the earth, but it is unbounded. No fences or weird walls that force you to stop. Now think about space. Because of various kinds of curvature of space, some people think of space itself as being finite, there is only so much, but the amount is beyond imagining-- and it is also unbounded. You can just keep going and going. Although, if you could survive the trip, you might eventually find yourself back where you started, without ever hitting any kind of obstacle at all! Because there is no outside. No end, no outside, yet finite and unbounded. Answer (2) There may be many theories that space is infinite. But since there is a starting point , then there may be an endpoint. Someday we may find that endpoint. Answer (3) The universe goes on in infinite space and time, and we are just intelligent living organisms trying to find answers about it. Answer (4) We can travel as far as our 'horizon', which depends on our size and how long we live. Fortunately, the closer to the speed of light we travel, the longer we live in the universe's time frame. The longer we survive, (individually and as a species), the farther we can get.
Answer (5) We may never know. The universe is apparently constantly expanding. One theory is that the universe will be expanding forever. Another theory is that the universe will stop expanding, and gravity will pull the matter back into one big superdense and super hot singularity. Before the 20th century, astronomers believed the Milky Way galaxy was the entire universe and only 100,000 light years in width. But in the 1920's Edwin Hubble discovered that the farther a Galaxy is from Earth, the faster it appears to be moving. This indicated that the universe was constantly expanding. And perhaps the edge of our universe is a wormhole to a parallel dimension. The universe can be considered infinite.

Answer 2

The consideration for "what are the limits ofthe universe" depends on one's determination of what the universe means to them. It could be said that the universe is endless because its very determination is built upon the evolving consideration of a reality within the dimensional degrees of SpaceTime convergence. It might be stated that our perspective of universal reality is bounded by our fourth dimensional frame of reference for existence within this SpaceTime continuum. In this sense of existence, it might be stated that our universe is not infinite; for outside this fourth dimensional abstraction of the SpaceTime continuum, our reality of existence has no meaning.

Yet within the consideration of our traditional fourth dimensional existence, scientists agree that the Theories of Relativity and Special Relativity bound our universal reality with a definable SpaceTime continumm. By virtue of these theories, expectations are extrapolated. One such expectation is that once the universe was once created by the Big Bang, the universe will end in a Big Crunch. Another expectation is that once the universe was once created by the Big Bang, the universe will end in a Big Rip. Therefore, by virtue of these theories, our universe within this fourth dimensional abstraction, will eventually evolve beyond its current dimensional limitations. And, as stated before, outside this fourth dimensional abstraction for our SpaceTime continuum, our reality of existence has no meaning.

Answer 3

There is nothing called the end of the Universe. There are three possibilities of the shape [See Link] of the Universe.

First, the Universe might have what we call positive curvature like a sphere. In this case, the Universe is called "closed" and it has a finite size but without a boundary, just like a balloon In a closed Universe, you could, in principle, fly a spaceship far enough in one direction and get back to where you started from.

The second possibility is that the Universe is flat. This kind of Universe can be imagined by cutting out a piece of a balloon material and stretching it with your hands. The surface of the material is flat and not curved. You can expand and contract it by tugging on either end. Flat Universes are infinite in extent and have no boundaries.

Finally, the Universe might be "open" or have negative curvature. Such Universes are also infinite in spatial extent and have no boundaries.

Thus whatever be the shape of the Universe, there is nothing called a boundary and hence nothing called the edge or end of the Universe.

Regarding the second question of expansion, remember that space exists only IN the Universe and there is no meaning to the term "outside the Universe". What happens in expansion is that the space itself is expanding. With respect to your room analogy, it is not that the walls of your room are pushing against something but that the space in the room is expanding; there is nothing to push against. Thus, when we talk of galaxies receding from us due to the expansion it is not that the galaxies are moving, but the space in between us and the galaxies is expanding.

By definition, it has no boundary, at least not in the first 4 dimensions.

Answer 4

There's no limit, in fact the space is expending every minute, and it will continue to do so until it destroy itself. Imagine that you have an elastic and you stretch it, eventually it will be squashed. This is the case of the universe.

This is not quite true. With the universe expanding constantly, it wont be sqaushed rather the further the solar systems move away, the more that will die out. This is caused by the fact that solar systems must use it other to "live" on and the further away they are the less "power" they gave to "run". The theory mentonied above is close to the theory, that if the universe DOES stop expanding it will draw back into itself eventually crushing everything inside of it.

Answer 5

There is no border of the universe. The universe and space is always expanding and getting bigger so there is no border line because if there were a border line that means space and the universe has stop expanding and that never happens. There is nothing beyond it because its still getting bigger.

Answer 6

The universe is approximately an amazing 13.7 billion years old. However, the farthest thing that we can see with our telescope is the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is 13.3 billion light years away. This is due to the fact that in the early stages of the universe, it was far too hot for protons and electrons to form the first atoms, thus any and all thermal radiation was absorbed by this uniform plasma. After 400 million years though it had cooled enough for hydrogen atoms to form, and the universe became transparent to thermal radiation instead of opaque. The radiation that was let through by those atoms is just now reaching us.

Answer 7

That's actually two questions: "What are the limits of the universe?" and "What are the boundaries of the universe?".

See the related questions below for more details on each part.