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How many miles is the universe?

Updated: 8/10/2023
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13y ago

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One theory is, that it will continue to expand forever because the velocity at which it is expanding will over come the gravitational effect of the galaxies on each other.

Another Theory is that due to Gravitational pull, the galaxies will start to pull each back towards a central point and start of a new Big Bang. This is called the Oscillatory Theory

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13y ago
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13y ago

The best guess right now is "forever". The currently popular depiction of the universe imagines it to be a closed space in which one can travel infinitely far in any direction.

The best way to think of this is to imagine a beach ball. If the galaxy is a dot on the surface of the ball and we travel any direction along its surface, we will never reach the end of the ball.

Of course, what the beach ball does in 2 dimensions, the universe seems to do in at least 4 (height, width, depth, time), though possibly more, and so the universe is more like a "klein bottle" than a beach ball.

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11y ago

As the universe is as massive as it is, the truthful answer to that question is inconclusive. While the observable universe contains trillions upon billions of celestial objects, there is no direct way to fully measure an accurate distance.

There are several theories, however, relating to the size of the universe, many of which have been discussed time and time again by leading astrophysicists. Some theories explain that the edge of the universe, well outside of our observational range, is moving at the speed of light outwards. Others describe it as a fairly stationary, yet massive, area of space and time. Some say it's infinite, having no borders and extending literally into infinity.

The universe then, is a big as you want it to be outside of your observable range.

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11y ago

If one is assuming the Big Bang theory is in essence true, then one need only take the age of the Known Universe, and multiply by two. You see, the fastest that anything could have streaked out from the Big Bang is light speed, so if the Known Universe is 15 billion years old, then it would be 30 billion light years wide.

The problem with that answer is that it ignores the expansion of space. It is, indeed, true that, IN THE ABSENCE OF EXPANSION, a photon that began to travel very near to the start of the Big Bang and then continued to travel for 15 billion years would travel 15 billion light-years. The situation changes with expansion, however. The 15 billion light-years that the photon would have travelled has, over time, expanded to over 45 billion light-years.

Thus, that infinitesmally small part of our Universe that we can see is actually about 46 billion light-years in radius.

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13y ago

The most distant objects observed so far are about 14 billion light years from us. In round numbers,

that makes the radius of the observable universe roughly 76,423,100,000,000,000,000,000 miles

in every direction, and appearing to us as if we're at the center.

Note that this number doesn't take us to the end of the universe. It's only the greatest distance

at which we've been able to see things up until now.

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14y ago

That depends on the star; but even the closest star, Proxima Centauri, is a very long way away in terms of miles.

You do the math! Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light-years away, and a light-year is the distance that light travels in one year.

There are 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour. There are 24 hours in a day and 365.24 days per year.

Light travels at 186,000 miles per SECOND.

Multiply all those numbers together to get the distance to the NEAREST star!

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15y ago

THE UNNIVERSE STRETCHES 4EVER AND EVER AND EVER... INFINITI.

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12y ago

No humans have ever gone any further than Mars.

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11y ago

Scientists don't know. They are measuring it by light years, not miles.

The Universe is 936,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles big. Or 936 Sextillion miles big.

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12y ago

The universe will expand forever, there is no limit as it still expands today

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Related questions

How many miles does the universe expand per second?

The universe expands 45 miles every second.


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Well, the universe never stops so... the universe does not have a center.


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