(ORDO NEWS) — Does the universe have boundaries? If it expands and does it at an increasing rate, then with each moment of time the Universe becomes “bigger”?
So, the Universe is indeed expanding at an increasing rate, but the Universe is not a “bubble” expanding into some already existing volume.
The universe exists everywhere, in all directions, and it is approximately uniform everywhere.
However, expansion does not mean that “more of the universe” is being created! The expansion indicates that the distances between objects are increasing on average.
Now let’s talk about the observable universe and its boundary
The boundary of the observable universe is determined by the age of the universe: you cannot observe parts of the universe that are too far away for light to reach you, given the finite age of the universe and the speed limit determined by the speed of light.
Notice we said “you can’t watch”. This is because our observable universe is different from the observable universe seen by a hypothetical person living at a distance of, say, 12 billion light-years from Earth.
It can even be assumed that there are very distant places in the Universe where intelligent beings can live, for which the boundary of the observable Universe is our Milky Way.
Thus, the earliest light we see was emitted not when the universe was 0 seconds old, but when it was already about 385,000 years old.
And this is not even light, but cosmic microwave background radiation.
No matter how much we wish it, and no matter what technologies we create, we will never be able to see what was before! For us, 385,000 years from the birth of the Universe is a conditional boundary.
Conclusion: The boundary of the universe depends on your position in space. For all of us living on Earth, it is the same.
How difficult! Is the universe finite or not?!
This question is still open. However, according to modern research, astrophysicists agree that the universe wraps around itself in a higher dimension, just as the two-dimensional surface of a sphere wraps around itself in three dimensions.
Roughly speaking, our Universe can be closed in three dimensions and have the shape of a three-dimensional donut.
Conclusion: Yes, most likely, the Universe is indeed infinite.
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