Current Events > Why do people think space is finite

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Like people think that everything stops existing outside of the observable universe.
There probably is a whole lot of nothing out there, but the one thing there is is space and theres infinity of it
An unfathomable distance from our observable universe there has probably even been another big bang and another universe. Why would there be only one?
Yet people here think thats wrong and give some dodgy responses and never anything legit

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At one point, humans thought the world was flat. Some still do, in fact.

Consider that.

DoctorPiranha3 posted...

At one point, humans thought the world was flat. Some still do, in fact.

Consider that.

Yep. That's why it's not worth talking about.

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DoctorPiranha3 posted...

At one point, humans thought the world was flat. Some still do, in fact.

Consider that.

Yeah but ive never seen a flat earther on this websight. I have seen some non-infinite-universers here tho

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why would it be infinite? it started small, grew quickly, and is growing still. how does that ever equate to infinite?

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Medussa posted...

why would it be infinite? it started small, grew quickly, and is growing still. how does that ever equate to infinite?

Youre talking about the observable universe. Im talking about the beyond

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I wonder if there is a limit to space, what would it look like? What would happen if you tried to go past it?

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Space isn't an object, TC

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MedeaLysistrata posted...

Space isn't an object, TC

Right. But its there

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We're actually inside a drop of water that's about to fall into the mouth of a child. Three seconds for the kid is billions of years for us.

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OffTempo posted...

I wonder if there is a limit to space, what would it look like? What would happen if you tried to go past it?

They always dodge by saying "the observable universe would grow"

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GregShmedley posted...

You know, the universe is a little bit like the human hand.

Its really not

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I'm just throwing out things I've thought of. Say there is some barrier to space that caps off travel after a certain distance.

Would it be something that you physically cannot pass through no matter what? Or if you could pass through it would it be instant death? Or maybe it would just be empty space where nothing exists and you couldn't survive in. Fuck I wish legit spacetravel was a thing so this shit could be figured out.

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I doubt the universe is infinite or has an outside. Space probably just loops back on itself. Like how if you fly across the globe you eventually end up in the same place.
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The Rika_Fukuda school of logic.

The universe is infinite because why wouldn't it be?

There's been multiple big bangs. Why would you think otherwise?

I intuitively believe something, therefore it is obviously true.

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Dodging again. What do you think is at the edge of the observable universe preventing something from leaving? Pogo_marimo just cant comprehend this.

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Rika_Furude posted...

Dodging again. What do you think is at the edge of the observable universe preventing something from leaving? Pogo_marimo just cant comprehend this.

there is nothing special at the edge of the observable universe. the universe beyond it is just like the universe here. we just can't observe it, because it's further away than light could have traveled in all of time. because the space between us and that edge is expanding. as it continues to expand, what at one point was part of our observable universe stops being part of our observable universe. but nothing actually happens to it when it crosses that edge.

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Space is only as big as the speed of light from the start of the big bang or whenever it started.

If you go beyond, you break the universe

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Observable universe is getting tossed around all willy-nilly; there's a lot of stuff we know to be there that we can't observe anymore.

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From my very very basic understanding, the universe grows at a rate faster than we can observe it. Nothing can actually go faster than the rate of expansion to be on the outside of it. We know this because of dark energy or something.

It's mostly stuff above my head so I can't offer an independent explanation.

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Rika_Furude posted...

Dodging again. What do you think is at the edge of the observable universe preventing something from leaving? Pogo_marimo just cant comprehend this.

Space doesn't have to be infinite to prevent something from leaving it. Space may be finite, but we know that it is expanding. And if it is expanding at a rate faster than anything within that space can move, then nothing within that space will ever be able to reach the edge in the first place. You could pick a spot and move 1000 lightyears towards the "edge", but if that edge has expanded 1001 lightyears in that time, you'll be 1 lightyear further from the edge than when you started.

EDIT: I keep forgetting the format tags don't work anymore. :-/

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Olbers' paradox. If space was infinite, there would be no night time as the entire sky would be lit with stars.

Space itself is expending. There could be other bubbles beyond the extent of this universe, but it doesn't change that within this bubble, everything started from the Big Bang including the space in the bubble itself.

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Theres absolutely zero evidence to suggest there have been multiple big bangs
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The universe is finite because it doesn't have an infinite amount of objects in it? Wut

Though you can get to infinity through addition

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MarqueeSeries posted...

Theres absolutely zero evidence to suggest there have been multiple big bangs

Physics brah. It's all, like, X's, Y's, and elliptical quasi variable matrix differential waves

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Medussa posted...

there is nothing special at the edge of the observable universe. the universe beyond it is just like the universe here. we just can't observe it, because it's further away than light could have traveled in all of time. because the space between us and that edge is expanding. as it continues to expand, what at one point was part of our observable universe stops being part of our observable universe. but nothing actually happens to it when it crosses that edge.

Yes correct. Thats what im saying. There is an edge to the observable universe, but people itt think that theres no such thing as "the unobserved universe"

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Aristoph posted...

Space doesn't have to be infinite to prevent something from leaving it. Space may be finite, but we know that it is expanding. And if it is expanding at a rate faster than anything within that space can move, then nothing within that space will ever be able to reach the edge in the first place. You could pick a spot and move 1000 lightyears towards the "edge", but if that edge has expanded 1001 lightyears in that time, you'll be 1 lightyear further from the edge than when you started.

EDIT: I keep forgetting the format tags don't work anymore. :-/

Yes thats true. But that doesnt mean that whats beyond the edge doesnt exist

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What I think doesn't particularly matter, you're using your brain like a squeaky toy and subjecting others to the various honks and whistles that come out with strenuous use.

The universe could be hyperbolic and loop back in on itself. The universe could be infinite. The universe could have no discernible edge but the laws of physics slowly break down until the nature of existence or reality becomes undefined entirely. The universe could have a entirely uninterpretable limit defined by bizarre quantum probability fields that we wouldn't even be capable of comprehending. That's all irrelevant to how laughable your capacity to produce "intelligent" thought is while simultaneously being undeservedly condescending.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKnpPCQyUec

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DuranOfForcena posted...

not everyone itt

True. But one very hostile user indeed

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There is probably a point far out enough that gravity has no effect. Hell, even lagrange points approximate that, but other forces still apply.

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Rika_Furude posted...

Yes thats true. But that doesnt mean that whats beyond the edge doesnt exist

Well, kind of by definition of the term "edge"....yeah, it does. At least in this hypothetical. If there was something beyond that, we wouldn't have called it the edge and we would have simply chosen a point further out in the area you call "beyond" to start our hypothetical travel from.

I'm just explaining that simply because we can't reach the "edge" it is not in any way evidence that there is no edge. There is really no way for us to ever know if the universe is finite or infinite. What we can say is that what we can observe is finite. And so the belief that the universe as a whole may be finite is a perfectly acceptable belief.

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Fun fact: technically, every single user in this topic knows exactly the same amount of information pertaining to the edge of the universe or deep outer space

Zero. Not even a speck.

but yes, keep arguing.

So when people say the universe is expanding, that only means the observable universe? The unobservable universe has always been infinite? We live in a finite world, so it's hard to understand how something can truly be infinite.
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Guys, I just posted a video of our galaxy just being marble toys for this weird octopus alien.

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how can a universe infinitely expand into nothing?

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DuranOfForcena posted...

well, who's to say it's nothing? we don't know any more about that than what we know about the edge of the universe or lack thereof. but the question of what exactly the expanding universe is expanding into is a different question entirely.

Empty space. You know how some parts of space are just a void with no atoms. That.

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pojr posted...

The unobservable universe has always been infinite?

We don't know. We can't observe it to check.

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DuranOfForcena posted...

so space is expanding into.... space? that doesn't really make any sense

The observable universe is expanding into space. Just because that space hasnt been observed it doesnt mean its not there

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DuranOfForcena posted...

well i'm not talking about just the observable universe

I am

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