infinite space

Is there infinite space?

At this forum? No.

Just kidding.AM

Infinite space? Why not?

well we don't Know for all we know when you reach a certain point you can run into a Wall..... its unknown at this point. But I don't see why there can't be

This has got to be of the single hardest concepts to wrap your mind around (if that can be done to infinity) A universe that has a beginning and expands at a finite speed must have an envelope that expands with it and which by definition marks the edge of spacetime.however in looking at the stars because of the finite speed of light we are looking back in time to how the universe was.Since the information brought to us in different forms of electromagnetism are all we have at present to determine what the universe is (was) like it seems there is no way to actually determine if infinity exists.the conceptual difficulty really begins with trying to understand what exactly the universe is expanding into.These are the kinds of questions that pharmaceutical companies make money from the sale of headache medications.Anyone got further insight into this?

this is Just one of those things you need to stop thinking about. it Just Bothers everyone's mind who thinks of it......... the Problem is our Small minded ways of thinking "everything must have a Begining and and end." Although things in Our little world do doesn't mean everything needs to. This way of thinking is the Reason the IDea Creation I think sticks around so much. its Hard to imagine things without a Begining an end or anything else like that. We look for ways to make it fit into that way of thinking. I am not even Sure if the Ideas of an expanding and Contracting Univese are all that GReat Becasue again these 2 ideas try to make the Universe Fit into the Small way of thinking....... Why can't the Universe go on forever? why did t ever have to start?

Infinite space does exist.(if you can call it existing)When thinking about infinite space you have to picture more that just our universe. Our universe is infinitely small relitive to infinite space.
It is very hard to explain the concept of infinite space to someone. It is something that you have to realize on your own, but I can give you an example to point you in the right direction.
In this example I will use the size of our universe to show you how space can be infinite.
For this example we will say that the entire mass of the universe is represented by the number 1. If you double the mass of the universe you have a mass of 2,and if you double that 4, and double that 8,and so on infinitely.In other words, no matter how big something is there can ALWAYS be something bigger. This is not a hard concept to wrap your mind around, but what is hard to wrap your mind around is the concept of infinitely small. Picture our original universe with a mass of 1. Now instead of doubleing the mass infinitely,cut it in half infinitely. A mass of 1 becomes .5 which becomes .25 which becomes .125 and so on infinitely. The main thing you have to realive about infinitely small is that the mass of any given object can shrink for an infinite amount of time without ever reaching a mass of 0.
The bottom line about infinite space is that no matter how big something is, there can ALWAYS be something bigger. And no matter how small something is there can ALWAYS be something smaller.
Remember when trying to wrap your head around an object growing or shrinking infinitely,to think about each individual atom of that object growing and shrinking rather that the amount of atoms growing and shrinking.P.S. If you would like a better explanation of infinite space or any other related topic, I would be more than happy to reply.
(I consider myself somewhat of an expert on life's important questions)

How are you so sure this infinite space exists in the first place? It could just as well be finite.

There are a few different things to consider in evaluating a question like yours. First consider this:Spacetime appears to be a continuum (according to our best observations at this time which may later prove to be incorrect), and it is the nature of a continuum that it is infinitely divisible. In more direct terms, between any two non-congruent spacetime coordinates, there exists infinitely many spacetime coordinates. For another perspective, recall in simple geometry how there exists infinitely many points on a line segment drawn bewteen any two non-congruent points. In the same way there exists infinitely many spacetime points between any two non-congruent spacetime coordinates.Next, consider what you mean when you ask "Is there infinite space?" Do you mean "Does there exist infinitely many spacetime coordinates/intervals?" The answer to that is obviously yes if spacetime is indeed continuous. If you mean "Is spacetime unbounded?" or "Is there a maximum spacetime interval?" the answer is somewhat more tricky. Stephen Hawking offered the "No Boundary Condition" in his book A Brief History of Time which proposed a finite region of spacetime that had no boundaries (somewhat like the surface of a sphere), however some recent data from WMAP seemed to reveal a generally flat spacetime and thereby falsify that proposal. At that point it seemed that spacetime was unbounded, and that its expansion is in fact accelerating.Even the Big Bang, which had previously been considered a boundary to the universe in the past, is now hardly considered that at all. The Big Bang has recently been conjectured to represent the collision of P-branes or M-branes (here my recollection is sorta fuzzy) in accordance with String Theory in the Ekpyrotic Model. Max Tegmark has also conjectured beyond the BB in his Many Worlds model which interestingly enough also encapsulates the Everett interpretation of Quantum Mechanics at the Level III multiverse.The latest news that I've heard on this front, however, is that the universe has now been considered finite and shaped like a soccer ball. This comes in accordance to observed density fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background which were inconsistent with an entirely flat spacetime, and the math makes the most sense if the universe is instead shaped like a dodecahedron. Here's an article about those observations: Universe is Finite, "Soccer Ball"-Shaped, Study HintsSo I suppose the most honest answer to your question is: We're not certain. Some cosmological models say yes, others no.

I dont know why they insist that the universe is shaped like a soccer-ball. They say in the article that it is shaped like a dodecahedron. (a spherical thingie made up of pentagons)
A soccer-ball consists of both pentagons and hexagons.I rest my case =D

This would be true except that we don't live in a classical universe. We live in a univers governed by the uncertainty principle, and under that condition, there comes a point where you can no longer discern a difference between a mass of 0 and a sufficiently small non-zero mass.So, no, you can't just keep shrinking, because you come to a point where you can't tell the difference between shrinking any further and disappearing. In our universe, if you divide by 2 long enough, you do get to zero - or so close as to be unable to tell the difference.There's a fundamental, bottom-end resolution to the universe, defined by uncertainty. At the upper end the universe is bounded by its volume and duration. If the universe had bounds at both ends, how can it be said to be infinite?

Crash,While I think that science has successfully evidenced a lower end to at least the classical universe (when you have to represent a location of a particle with a wave function, it's hard to say you can get better resolution than that), I would contend that the evidence that there is an upper end to the size of reality doesn't seem so clearly defined. What evidence do you think suggests conclusively that the size of the universe is finite?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Well, I would assume that a universe of infinite size would contain infinite mass. Therefore I don't see how a universe of infinite mass could expand at all - it should immedately collapse. Could it even expand?There just seem to be too many contradictions for an infinite universe.

An infinite universe would have infinite mass, but that mass would be distributed throughout an infinite volume of space. So the average density (plus initial conditions) will determine if the universe will collapse.Now, what are some of the other so called contradictions associated with infinite space?