Loading...

All right, got an interesting article from space.com for you guys to ponder over. Because of the government shutdown, JPL is not posting any news. They're kind of running a skeleton crew over there, just keeping things going. So the last thing they're working on is news, unfortunately. But I do have other sources in this one, space.com. This particular item, let's see. Is the universe infinite or does it have a limit? If the universe is expanding, then what is it expanding into and what is it expanding from? After a century of observations spanning the breadth of the cosmos and theoretical insights that push humanity's vision of the universe to its utmost limits, we can confidently say that the universe is infinite or not. It's complicated. Let's start with something we can say for certain. We live in an expanding universe, but if the universe is expanding, then what is it expanding into and what is it expanding from? Where's the edge of the universe and where is its center? It's easy to imagine an expanding universe and there are plenty of analogies to help guide our thinking. We can imagine drawing little galaxies on the surface of a balloon and inflating that balloon to see the balloon get farther apart. We can imagine baking a loaf of bread with raisins and seeing how, as the bread rises, the raisins get farther apart. But the balloon has both a center and an edge and the bread has a center and a crust. So where is the center of the universe and where is its edge?