Basically the title – I have a degree in Aerospace Engineering, but I still can’t answer this question posed by my girlfriend. An infinitely expanding universe implies that there’s a “container” the universe is expanding into, kind of like how you can pour a pancake into a pan & it’ll expand to the limits of the pan. But then that also implies that said container existed before the universe / big bang, which is…wild. Anyway, please ELI5!
In: Physics
It’s counterintuitive, but the universe is not expanding “into” anything. The universe is not some volume of space inside a larger container, and it’s not a thing that’s expanding from some central location like an explosion. When we say the universe is expanding, what we mean is that everything in the universe is moving away from everything else. This is happening everywhere in the universe.
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