• Question: does the universe ever stop? do you continue going for years and years?

    Asked by koonertwh to David, Helen, Ian, rhysphillips, Sarah on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Rhys Phillips

      Rhys Phillips answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      There is an end to it. We don’t know it’s exact size but we know it’s diameter is at *least* 150 billion light years long – that’s just under a billion billion miles!

    • Photo: Ian van der Linde

      Ian van der Linde answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      The Universe is still growing at a staggering rate as a result of the initial “Big Bang”. Although one popular theory says that, at some point, the Universe will stop expanding and then start collapsing in on itself, if we set out today towards the boundary of the Universe we would probably find that the boundary would keep moving backwards as the matter inside is expanding into the void.

    • Photo: David Corne

      David Corne answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      This is unknown – we just don’t understand enough about physics yet, on either large or small scales. We don’t even know if the laws of physics are the same or not everywhere in the universe. Most scientists think it will continue for ever in some form. I think it will end tomorrow at 0945 – but a whole new one will pop into existence at 0945.0000001 and we won’t notice that anything had happened.

    • Photo: Helen Fletcher

      Helen Fletcher answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      From my work friends: Current theory says it doesn’t stop, it expands and expands the stars go out (stop shining) eventually matter turns to heat and dissipates leaving cold space.

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