Eli5 how big is our universe?

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What could be past the 93 bilon light years we know of?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

So the size might depend on the shape. There are three potential shapes for the universe: flat, curves away from itself, or curves into itself. The first two could be infinite, the last would put a limit on the size of the universe. Scientists have tried to detect whether there is any curvature and so far have not detected any despite extremely accurate measurements. We can therefore state that, based on the accuracy of our measurement, that if the universe curves in on itself it still must be at least 23 trillion light years across, which is about 15 million times larger than the visible universe.

Obviously no one knows what is beyond the current visible universe, and because we are causally disconnected from anything that far away we will *never* know unless some form of extremely faster than light travel is invented. But it would be reasonable to assume that it’s just more galaxies stretching out tens of trillions of light years in every direction.

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