Thor said:
The SIZE of the universe is equivalent to the COLOR of space.
It is infinite. Undefined. Size is a definition and it has no 'size'.
The Universe is all which exists.
The scholarly sleight of hand to which contemporary theorists occasionally descend in order to achieve publication is, indeed, amazing. How sad that supposedly intelligent individuals are reduced to spouting and defending that which is obviously ridiculous. The kings have no clothes - no matter how much alphabet soup follows their names.
My first astro teacher, who instilled in me a sense of how professional astro/cosmo people talk, was always very careful to say "observable universe" when he meant observable universe.
When he simply said "universe" he meant the whole thing as inferred by fitting a model to the part we can see, based on the key assumption that the rest was uniformly similar. He made clear that he was assuming this kind of large-scale average uniformity ("homogeneity and isotropy" also called the "cosmological principle").
Without explicitly invoking this SAMENESS assumption, he would not make statements about the universe at large.
BTW this was not a boring guy. His lectures were exciting. But he was careful in his use of words in certain maitters. when he said observable universe that was different from what he called universe.
I think that is fairly typical although I can't actually speak about ALL cosmologists, only those I have observed.
Also he didn't talk about "extra dimensions" and "multiverse" or anything especially speculative. He could get published plenty with straightforward research based solidly on observation. (String theorists are a different kind of animal, in general, from astronomers---conditions in their community are different and what they consider legitimate research to publish about is different.)
My teacher often explained that the SCALE FACTOR which for lack of a better word is sometimes (in casual informal talk) called "the size of the universe" by astronomers was not, in fact, to be confused with the size of the observable universe. It is also called "the average distance between galaxies".
The scale factor is a number that changes with time and tracks the expansion and is usually set equal to 1 at present, by convention. You need it to construct a model that will fit the data. It is written a(t) or sometimes R(t) and it depends on time. Unfortunately astronomers have a careless habit of calling it "the size of the universe" when talking to laymen or journalists, but the correct term is the scale factor.
He was always careful to point out that the universe could be spatially finite or spatially infinite. Either way the model, where you have the scale factor, works. Finite and infinite are just two different versions of the same model.
The scale factor, this "average distance between galaxies" number a(t) that is growing with time can be approximately the same in either version.
The scalefactor is a well-defined number even if the universe is spatially infinite. Indeed it is convenient to assume that it is spatially infinite and that is commonly assumed when you do number-crunching. But I never heard an astronomer claim to KNOW whether it was spatially infinite or finite.
either way, as I said, the same a(t) or R(t) scalefactor, increasing with time, works.
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what I get from this is that, on this issue, you Thor are not so different in your thinking from the PhD people I happen to have encountered and whose stuff I read, and who are basically pretty sensible and clear-headed.
In your TONE you sound provoked, and as if you don't like Academics and suspect them of abusing words and spouting B**S***.
But in what you say you are not so different (on this issue) from Academic folk I've encountered.
So you could calm your tone down and we could talk about these things, if you want.
