is space infinate?

[crudus]

I don't think it is truely infinite. But it is really really big and expanding. Think about it. Our galaxy is 10,000 light years in diameter. I have a hard time imagining that size and round up to infinity when talking from the earth's scale. That and a 3-D mobious loop.

No. Nothing in this universe is infinite or perfect.

except Human stupidity.

 

[caz105]

*snip*

You can say that about everything:
Well for all we know; beyond the distance where we can see is the inside of kirby's belly making every single statement in this thread irrelevant. Prove me wrong.

 

[beddo]

Yes. Of course it is. It's infinite and expanding.

...then what is it expanding into?

OT: No, it's still expanding from the Big Bang.
The question is what lies beyond

Pure and utter incomprehensible nothingness. Inidentally it is infinite, as if you got an impossibly fast rocket and travelled in a dead straight line through space, you''d end up where you started. The human mind can not comprehend how it is possible, but somehow it is.

I find it interesting that people can claim there are things the human mind cannot understand, such as with space, but somehow cannot see how that argument could apply to a God, Gods, or higher power.

OT space may or may not be infinite. Until we have the means to find out, I won't worry about it since it will have no effect on me or my life.

I think most people do see how it could apply to a 'higher power' but that is no basis for believing it does. The reason most people reject the idea of God or Gods is that the followers and believers start bringing in rules/ These rules often seem to be at best erroneous and at worst inhumane, likely implemented by human prejudice.

In response to 'not worrying' about it. There are many things you don't understand; advanced mathematics, how to get planes to stay in the air, it doesn't mean that they're irrelevant to your life.

 

[beddo]

No. Nothing in this universe is infinite or perfect.

That's not depressing, right?

Well that's not true. Infinity is infinite, though whether its existence is ultimatelytied to the universe is unknown. In theory, black holes are infinitely dense singularities.

In mathematics the projective plane of order 2 would be considered perfect. Though perfect is actually still a subjective term.

 

[C_Topher]

To answer the OP, no, space is not infinite. Think of space as the surface of a balloon that's being blown up. Move straight in one direction and you'll end up back where you started eventually. This won't ever happen though, as the universe expands at a rate faster than the speed of light.

Given our understanding of the universe, this is probably the best answer. I've never really understood how space can be expanding faster than the speed of light, though I know it does.

 

[Amnestic]

*snip*

You can say that about everything:
Well for all we know; beyond the distance where we can see is the inside of kirby's belly making every single statement in this thread irrelevant. Prove me wrong.

No, you prove it right. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof]

 

[irishstormtrooper]

No one knows and no one will know. It's best not to think about it, lest your brain explodes.

 

[Maze1125]

Huh? The number line is infinite even without gaps between natural numbers.

No it isn't.
If the distance from 0 to 1 is zero and the distance from 1 to 2 is zero, then the distance from 0 to 2 is zero.
If the distance between every number is zero then can conclude the distance between 0 and an arbitrarily large number is zero and therefore all the numbers would be on a single point.

 

[Maze1125]

To answer the OP, no, space is not infinite. Think of space as the surface of a balloon that's being blown up. Move straight in one direction and you'll end up back where you started eventually. This won't ever happen though, as the universe expands at a rate faster than the speed of light.

You're misunderstanding the balloon analogy.
The balloon isn't meant to represent the shape of the universe, only how it expands.

 

[beddo]

I don't know. Common logic would lead me to believe that nothing is infinite and it has to end somewhere, but where?

What's at the edge? Is it just blackness? Would it just be like a wall that you can't pass through? Would I become a Reaver like in Firefly if I went to the edge?

It's possible that we are unable to get to the outside of the universe. Think of before we knew the world was round and before we could get into space. You could try and see everything by walking but you'd only ever be able to see the surface of the earth.

We don't truly know if there is anything outside the universe, it may be in another dimension or any number of possibilities. We're currently mostly focusing on the observable universe, hopefully the LHC will give us some more answers.

 

[noobface]

I don't know. Common logic would lead me to believe that nothing is infinite and it has to end somewhere, but where?

What's at the edge? Is it just blackness? Would it just be like a wall that you can't pass through? Would I become a Reaver like in Firefly if I went to the edge?

I'm not going to pretends that I know a great deal about this sort of thing, but here goes.

Assuming that the universe is infinite (and expanding):

The probability of the Reavers being real, in exactly the same way as in Firefly, are astronomically low. However, if the universe is infinite, then surely the odds of their existence at some point in the course of history become greater than or equal to one. Following this line of thought, everything anyone has ever imagined actually exists.

If someone can point out any scientific flaws in this logic, I would much appreciate it, because I have spent months thinking about everything with this logic,and it kind of bums me out to think that every time a favourite character in a book has been killed off, then somewhere out there a corresponding person has actually died.

 

[Tanfastic]

All that there is is this world, this solar system, this galaxy, this universe.

Nothing lies beyond, nothing lies out of sight, nothing exists.

 

[Godhead]

in theory yes, and also no. The theory that space and this universe will expand for eternity is out there. But also the theory that the universe will eventually stop expanding and cave in on itself where everything that ever happened will eventually happen again in millions of years. In truth i dont give a shit it wont affect me in any way.

 

[Martymer]

Current scientific theory is the space is infinite and expanding.
This is not a contradiction.

Take the number-line. That is infinite in every direction.
Now stretch the distance between each number to twice it's current length.
You have now expanded that number line despite the fact it is infinite.
The universe is expanding in exactly the same way.

The universe started out at a single point. In order for it to be infinitely big then it has had to be expanding for an infinite amount of time

That's not true.

If you took the natural number line and compressed every distance between each number to zero, then the number line would be a single point, but if the distance between each number was even slightly greater than zero, then the number line would be infinite again.

True, but this logic only applies to mathematics. The universe did not go from zero to infinite in a flash, as is the case with the natural number line, but from quantum-scale to non-quantum-scale-but-still-finite (no one can say with any certainty if it actually had zero size, because we currently don't have a working theory for how gravity behaves at the quantum-scale), and then kept growing.

My brother is a mathemetician, he tried to explain to me once that infinity and 2*infity are different numbers even though they're both infinite (I hope I'm not totally butchering his statement here). To be honest, I didn't get it at all. But if he's right that'd mean that the infinite universe could indeed expand beyond infinity into... more infinity... I guess. Huh.

Same thing here. While it's mathematically correct, it doesn't apply here. The problem is the mathematical concept of infinity. It's not a number (so yeah, you did butcher his statement ;-) ), but rather the idea that "whatever number I'm thinking of is greater than whatever number you're thinking of". For every number x, it's true that x < x+1. For x = 1, this is true. 1 < 2. For x = 10^10 (10 000 000 000), it's also true. 10^10 < 10^10+1. Also true for x = 10^"holyshityou'vegottabekiddingme!!!" Right? Well, let's say x is greater than whatever number you can imagine. The statement "x < x+1", is still true. Again, you can make x even more insanely huge, and it's still true that x < x+1. There's no magic number where x suddenly equals x+1. I'm guessing this is pretty much the explanation your brother gave.

 

[Maze1125]

Yes. Of course it is. It's infinite and expanding.

If it's infinite then how is it getting bigger?

Infinite doesn't mean it's restricted to a certain figure.

What's infinity + 1?

You can't have infinity + 1. Infinity is not a number in that sense, it has its own set of rules that are different to the regular numbers we deal with.

There are different sizes of infinity but you cannot manipulate any of them using normal mathematical operations.

It's quite possible to manipulate infinity using normal operations, it's just that most of the answers are just infinity again.

infinity + 1 = infinity
infinity + infinity = infinity
infinity * 2 = infinity
infinity * infinity = infinity
infinity / 2 = infinity
infinity / 0 = infinity (zomg division my zero!!!)
infinity^2 = infinity

A few give different answers.

infinity * 0 is undefined, as it could be any number.

And for any given infinity, which we will call x for now, 2^x > x

 

[beddo]

Huh? The number line is infinite even without gaps between natural numbers.

No it isn't.
If the distance from 0 to 1 is zero and the distance from 1 to 2 is zero, then the distance from 0 to 2 is zero.
If the distance between every number is zero then can conclude the distance between 0 and an arbitrarily large number is zero and therefore all the numbers would be on a single point.

The number line refers to the Real set, it is infinite by definition, it is not expanding.

If you were to place the natural numbers on the real line there would be a distance of exactly one between each number else they would all be at the same point. However, it's simpler to think that there are an infinite number of natural numbers.

 

[Nukey]

no clue, but if does end what happens when we reach the end? do we fall off the edge? do we die? or do we just reappear on the opposite side?

 

[zeekyle]

yes...