Does space end?

Does space end? Or is it one of those things that give you a head ache because something never ending is just not understandable....opinions?

Your question is a bit vague

When you say "end", do you mean it in size or in time?

My apologies, I was refering to size.

Thank you for posting this question... very interesting.

Now I don't claim to have an answer, just a personal opinion. (I'll leave the real answers to those who have had a proper education in these matters)

My opinion is that the universe is indeed neverending and my explanation for that is that it must be in a globe. I know... very confusing... but the way I look at things everything that is neverending should be in a circular shape or in a loop like event. I don't know why I feel this way... i just do.

Juliet.

Its questions like these that turn people towards God. Less of them! I think its never ending. Just because I cant understand the concept, like death, it doesnt mean its not there.

I also believe that it never ends. Reminds me of the old joke, 'If you had everything, where would you put it?'.

I think it will go on for as far as we want to observe it. Outside that distance it doesn't exist... until someone sees it.

I think space is finite because it had a beginning.

Here's a couple of links that I thought might help answer your question a little.

science.hq.nasa.gov...

science.hq.nasa.gov...

I don't quite remember where I read it, but it said something to the form of dark matter or dark energy bursting that causes the universe to expand.

Originally posted by DarkSide
I think space is finite because it had a beginning.

Did it...?

Originally posted by fiftyfifty

Originally posted by DarkSide
I think space is finite because it had a beginning.

Did it...?

What makes you think it didn't ? Just curious.

There is no way to prove a beginning. There is 'some proof' of the big bang but can we be so sure and would that have even been the beginning?

It's generally understood that space curves back in on itself. Sort of like that old game of "Asteroids," where when you flew the little spaceship off one side of the screen, it reappeared on the other side. However, this interpretation might just be a trick of the mathematics, and not representative of how things are in real life.

The fact of the matter is that you can never get to the end of the Universe. Think about it. It's expanding away from you at the speed of light, and it has a 13 billion year head start.

However, for the sake of argument, if you were somehow magically able to travel fast enough to catch up to the edge of the Universe as it expands away from you, I imagine that you'd find everything crowding around you and moving toward a central point. That's because by traveling that fast you'd essentially be going back in time, toward the Big Bang, so the Universe would appear to be condensing back into itself.

Personally, I don't think there was such a thing as a Big Bang. I think that the Universe doesn't function within a strict linear causality chain. I think it has always existed in some form, and pieces of it continue to bubble back and forth between zero-point vacuum virtuality and hard physical reality. It's expanding, but it didn't expand from a central point singularity. The material Universe just kind of "soaked" into existence, like water through a paper towel. But I'm sure there are smarter people than myself who would disagree with me.

How and why did that happen? I think it was because somebody or something somewhere with a very strong consciousness simply imagined it to be so, in the past, and it happened, backwards in time. Because consciousness works on a temporally non-linear, quantum level. And I'm absolutely sure other people much smarter than myself would disagree with me about that, too.

i dont think it has an end couse i just cant imagine an invisible wall that stops the universe and whats beyond?
i dont have proof or know much but i think it dosnt have an end,its maybe circular as sayd above and u just return to the same place
if it DOES have an end it probably lead to another dimension,reality,time,or just something that we cant explain

Originally posted by fiftyfifty
I think it will go on for as far as we want to observe it. Outside that distance it doesn't exist... until someone sees it.

Sooo... I want to see ALL of it... How much would that be?... 238Km?

I believe that space is never ending but... in both ways.. I think that is we start pointing our telescopes in molecules and whatnot that we will indeed find that those are never ending and can contain universes in there self.

So all in all... we are in something unimaginable size but, to something else we are an adam and our adams have universes with other adams.

So, it is never ending both ways, down to the micron and up to space. Depending on what you are, space could be too small to see or too big to imagine.

EDIT: It must have to loop somewhere.. soo.. Imagine you looking through the most powerful microscope that hasn't even been close to invented yet...

What do you see... You see earth, you see yourself looking into the microscope.. imagine that. It might not loop though but, that would be some weird stuff.

[edit on 8/7/0707 by Bumr055]

There are theories that the universe may be flat, cylindrical, or spherical. Personally I speculate that it might be in the shape of a torus. Though taking 10 dimensions into account it gets even more complicated to understand.

Either way, if space curves back on itself to form a 'sealed' shape, then I suppose it's infinite in a way since it can expand, yet it remains closed. So there would be no 'end' of space that we could see... no falling off the edge or hitting a brick wall. But like a balloon, it could expand.

Taking the theory further, space might also contract once it reaches a certain point. It looks like our universe is still expanding though.

scratch that it definelty wont return us to the point from when we goed i dont think its circular...the only way to return us if the end of the universe is a black hole
imagine a 3d universe that is fully surrounder by darkness that is a black hole that lead to another universe,time etc
now thats really SOUNDS plausable to me^^

Originally posted by fiftyfifty
There is no way to prove a beginning. There is 'some proof' of the big bang but can we be so sure and would that have even been the beginning?

It would be the beginning of it's expansion but not the beginning of it's existance. The big bang theory doesn't say how the universe appeared but only describes a change in state, an evolution of it.

Hopefully we will know the truth in the not so distant future (I say 'we'...'we' will all most likely be scattered in our favorite place or underneath a nice stone with our names on). How long is it since 'we' thought the Earth was flat...?

Interesting opinions. I myself cannot understand never ending. Although the Bible mentions eternity in heaven or hell....eternity, never ending; Maybe I'm the only one that gets a head ache thinking about it...