• Question: how do we know that the universe is infinite

    Asked by Sinna to Alison, Hannah, Jonny, MarthaNari, Paul on 20 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 20 Jun 2015:

      Well, we don’t. Some predict that it is not infinite in time, but instead will eventually collapse back in on itself. Others think it will eventually stop expanding when it reaches a certain size. Still others think it is infinite and will continue expanding forever.But we really don’t know who is right.

    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 25 Jun 2015:

      We only can see things that light has bounced off and come back to us. Some of the objects in the universe are so far away that the light still hasn’t finished travelling back to us. This means there are still things in the universe that we still haven’t seen. So even if the Universe isn’t infinite (which as Paul correctly mentioned, we don’t know), we still haven’t seen everything yet.

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