0

(Please don't mark as a duplicate)

If the universe is constantly expanding that means that there is a point the univese hasn't expanded past, with that what would be past that point? This isn't about what its expanding into, this is about whats happens if you pass the edge?

Qmechanic
  • 201,751
KayderBoyT
  • 11
  • 3
  • Does this answer your question? What is at the edge of space? – Michael Seifert May 04 '22 at 18:12
  • 2
    Does this answer your question? Did the Big Bang happen at a point? – John Rennie May 04 '22 at 18:17
  • Suppose you are a 2D creature living on the surface of a toy balloon. Suppose the surface is your entire reality. You cannot perceive or measure anything else. You have no objective reason to think that anything else except that surface exists. And suppose the balloon is being slowly inflated. The distance between everything and everything else in your "universe" is slowly increasing. But what can you say about the "space" into which your universe is expanding? You can speculate, but with no hard evidence, your speculations would be nothing but fantasy. – Solomon Slow May 04 '22 at 18:25
  • John Mather, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, has described the universe as "expanding into itself". At least in the non-capitalized version of "universe" (implying nothing outside it) that's favored in NASA's style manual, it's hard to see how such an expansion could not be described as "the universe subdividing itself", although the fact that gravitationally-bound objects (sized from galaxies downward) are relativistically seen as remaining centered at fixed positions would equally well suggest that the expanding space is released by the contraction of those objects, including any occupant. – Edouard May 06 '22 at 18:01
  • On my own time and space scale, I often feel like I'm not (overall) contracting, but the beauty of relativity is its scale invariance (which does not mean "scale that doesn't vary", but rather, that relativity applies at every conceivable scale of space and time, including scales whose application we can only hypothesize). – Edouard May 06 '22 at 18:32
  • Typical example of "contraction": Reduction in the space between the bones of your feet and the floor, when you get out of bed and step onto the floor in the morning. (Sure, it does not leave you much shorter, but such faint reductions in space, leaving more of it available elsewhere, have added up, if the universe is large and old enough.) – Edouard May 06 '22 at 20:08

2 Answers2

1

If the universe is constantly expanding that means that there is a point the univese [sic] hasn't expanded past...

Your premise is not necessarily correct.

with that what would be past that point?

The "that" of your "with that" seems to refer to your premise, which you have not supported.

This isn't about what its expanding into, this is about whats happens if you pass the edge?

You have not supported your supposition that there is an "edge" in the first place.

hft
  • 19,536
0

I don't think there is any reason to believe that there is a limit to how "much" the Universe can expand...

I guess it can keep expanding for ever, so there is no "edge" that if the Universe expands beyond it, something will happen.

What would be, past that point before the Universe has managed to expand there yet?

I think that the most honest answer is, nobody knows.

But if our Universe is infinite in all directions, then it is, just an infinite Universe which is expanding... So the answer is... More of the same stuff more or less.

But all that is far beyond my understanding so I could be wrong.

  • Also I think you need to format your question better:

If the universe is constantly expanding - that could mean, that there is a point (after which) the univese hasn't expanded past yet. With that in mind my question is: What could there "be" past that point?

Which is a very broad question involving much speculation and probably bellongs in meta

Nuke
  • 107
  • 8
  • If its infinte it means it must still be expanding, if its not constantly expanding its not truly infinite, so with that there is a point that doesn't even, how we see it, exist yet because the universe hasn't expanded to that point yet so, if you could be at that point when the universe expands to it, what would be past it is my question? – KayderBoyT May 04 '22 at 18:27
  • You can have an infinite Universe that's infinite from the inside and finite from the outside. If you think of the example of the inflating balloon, there might be no reason to believe that there is anything else other than the balloon itself getting bigger... Or maybe - there IS something beyond the balloon... Like I said above, we are still very far from answering those questions with clear certainty. I don't think we know yet. – Nuke May 04 '22 at 18:42
  • PBS also just dropped a video about this very topic! – Nuke May 04 '22 at 21:01