What’s beyond it? What are the theories? I always thought of the universe as a bubble expanding and keeping itself afloat in white space lol
In: Physics
Not nothing. As in literally not nothing: There isn’t even nothing beyond the universe, because “beyond the universe” fundamentally does not exist. Your brain can’t comprehend that. Neither can mine. But there is literally no such thing as “space beyond the edge of the universe”.
What an expanding universe means isn’t a bubble that physically gets bigger, but rather an infinite plane on which the distance between any two points is physically increasing. Imagine the universe is the surface of a balloon. Draw points on that balloon. Now blow it up. Note how every point has got further away from all the other points, but at no point has the “edge” of the balloon expanded, because there is no edge to the balloon’s surface – it is one continuous surface in all directions. Imagine that, but in three dimensions. Of course, you can’t do it because human brains just aren’t built to be able to do it. But pretend you imagined it.
That image misses the point. Space is not a growing bubble. Distance itself is swelling up. One mile (very) slowly becomes two miles and eventually three and so on. It’s not like space is expanding into… other space. Space itself, as in the distances between objects is getting bigger.
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