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mtasquared
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Do any scientists believe that the universe is far bigger than the observable one?
mtasquared said:Do any scientists believe that the universe is far bigger than the observable one?
As our measurements of the part we can observe continue to get better, our estimates of the minimum total size have been getting bigger and bigger. We still don't know how big it is, all we have are estimates of the minimum possible size.aib said:So a circumference of 600 billion would mean a diameter of approx 191 billion LY, isn't that a bit more than was considered just a few years back? IIRC it was about 150 billion
Well, it's pretty trivial to conceive of an infinite universe.aib said:So as technology gets better we detect a bigger universe... chances are our technology will never get good enough to detect an infinite universe, but maybe our concepts will.
Well, like I said, we don't know yet. But if, for instance, cosmic inflation lasted only twice as long as the minimum required to explain the smoothness and flatness of our observable region, then inflation will have generated 10^90 times as much volume as our observable region.aib said:Also what do you mean by much larger, like 2x or 10x or more? Because to me 190 is not that much more compared to 90 billion LY (observable)
aib said:I cannot shake the feeling that "infinite" and "expanding to infinity" get mixed here. If the whole universe was once contained in a single point of space, then it means all matter in the universe has a certain volume, thus it is finite.
aib said:Dunno, in school we were taught the whole universe expanded from a very small singularity, like smaller than an atom, but that was 10 years ago, I have no idea what's in physics schoolbooks today.
I don't honestly know what they teach in school. I'm just saying what we can reasonably infer from the evidence.aib said:Dunno, in school we were taught the whole universe expanded from a very small singularity, like smaller than an atom, but that was 10 years ago, I have no idea what's in physics schoolbooks today.
Chronos said:... To be larger than observed infers it is older than observed. ...
Chronos said:Interesting, that suggests a curvature of time.
The size of the universe is constantly expanding and currently estimated to be at least 93 billion light-years in diameter.
Scientists use various methods, including analyzing the cosmic microwave background radiation, measuring the redshift of galaxies, and using standard candles like supernovae to estimate the size of the universe.
Currently, the observable universe is considered to have a finite size, but it is unknown if the entire universe is finite or infinite.
Due to the expansion of the universe and the limitations of technology, it is unlikely that we will ever know the exact size of the universe.
No, the size of the universe is constantly changing and expanding due to the force of dark energy.