RE: Is the universe infinite?
November 19, 2014 at 1:30 am
(This post was last modified: November 19, 2014 at 1:39 am by Anomalocaris.)
(November 19, 2014 at 1:13 am)vorlon13 Wrote: We know for sure to 3X from my simplistic geometrical angle and the WMAP results I think gets you way beyond that.
And if you're willing to wait a few googleplex years, even that 3X distance gets kinda staggering.
Way beyond what? Accelerating expansion of the universe means almost everything will eventually recede from us at accelerating rate. Expansion of the universe is not limited by light speed, so almost everything will eventually surpass light speed as they recede from us. The size of visible universe, on the other hand, grows at fixed rate equal to speed of light. So time will not allow us to see more of the universe. It will restrict us to seeing less and less of the universe as time goes on.
In a googleplex years, the visibility horizon might be a googleplex light years. But by that time a googleplex light years might barely be big enough to contain a single proton, everything else having been carried beyond the confines of a sphere a googleplex light years in radius by expansion of universe.
