what does it mean for the universe to be infinite?
In: Planetary Science
The universe or the observable universe? Two different things.
It’s not known if the universe is infinite or not. The observable universe had a beginning, so that’s not temporally infinite in both directions, and there’s a fixed limit to its size, as measurable by the speed of light. But the universe itself? Unknown. Experts mostly suggest it’s possibly infinite, though, either because it simply expands forever in every direction, or because it’s curved and has no edge.
The former because the universe is expanding in all directions, at all times. No matter which direction you go, nor for how long, you won’t reach a limit and you’ll move further away from where you started. Rather than a globe, think of it like an infinite set of points, each of which is expanding away from every other point. There’s no middle or edge, unlike the observable universe.
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