Is the universe finite or infinite?

Eric333

Please allow me to make a clarification, I realize my wording sounds like nonsense but when I said "space" I meant "anything created by the big bang" and the farthest known element from that bang would demarc "space" and the "void" but I realize the word space is confusing :-)

Whovian

There is no void in any sense that space is expanding into. The Big Bang happened everywhere.

Eric333

Everywhere? In basic terms, it was a central node that exploded right? Then the elements of that explosion expanded outward (and is still doing so). What is 1 inch beyond the boundary of that ever expanding explosion?

Whovian

Nope. Again, it sort of occurred everywhere. In basic terms, it was an incredibly dense stuff everywhere, and space sort of started expanding, decreasing the density of this incredibly dense stuff and bringing any two points further apart. Sorry if this doesn't sound too rigorous, it's an imperfect wording, but suffices.

Pesj

Eric, you must not understand the expansion as an outward movement within three dimensions. If so we would observe empty space (no stars or galaxies) "inwards" and "outwards" and the galaxies would lie in a plane or disc in the other directions. This is not the case the universe is evenly filled with galaxies in all directions. The expansion is an ever increasing distance between non-gravitationally bound objects. There is no spatial point an inch beyond the big bang at any time. At least not located in what we usually define as the universe.

Drakkith

This is why I hate the term "Big Bang". It just screams "explosion in space". Instead of an explosion, imagine the universe running backwards in time. Everything gets closer to everything else until the entire universe, ALL of it, is extremely dense and extremely hot. This is the earliest period that we can make good theories about. At this point in time, the universe was still infinite in size and there is still no center. As time passed the universe expanded, meaning that the distance between all objects not bound increased with time, until we get to our present day universe. Have you ever heard of the raisin bread analogy?

twofish-quant

I actually like the term. A "bang" is a loud noise and much of the data we are looking at involves essentially looking at the "sound of the universe".

One term that I've used in talking about the CMB which I think is accurate is the "wall of fire".

The other thing that I think is useful is not to think about the entire universe. One thing to imagine is to take a camera and "zoom in" to our part observable universe and then just think of that. There is a part of the universe that you can't see, but it helps not to think of that.

One other point is that much of what we think of as the big bang, isn't that dense and isn't that hot. One reason I like talking about the "wall of fire" is that the temperatures and density at CMB separation are typical of those that we see when we deal with ordinary fire.

This is why the "zoom lens" picture makes sense to me. Imagine a picture with you at the center that goes out several tens of billions of light years. By thinking about *part* of the universe rather than the whole thing, I'm thinking about a finite bit that my mind can comprehend.