• Question: the universe takes up all around us right? but people say that the its expanding, so where is it expanding to?

    Asked by to Kate, Kieren, Nicola, Rowena, Roy on 17 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

      Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      This is like quantum mechanics – it doesn’t make sense to think about it in conventional ways! There is no space into which the universe expands… outside the universe is nothing. Or, perhaps, other universes.

      Let’s begin by imagining the universe is expanding but doesn’t have EDGES. One theory is if you keep going enough one way you eventually get back to where you started, assuming you can travel faster than the expansion, which is probably not true. Saddle-shaped universes and doughnut-shaped universes have been put forward to satisfy this theory, where you imagine a saddle (or pringle) or doughnut where we’re all moving around on the surface. Eventually you’d run round and go back the other way, except for it expanding too fast. Some people believe that this means there could be another “side” to the universe, i.e. the underneath of the saddle or the inside of the doughnut surface. This could create interesting ideas about how physics works there. The same or opposite?

    • Photo: Kate Nicholson

      Kate Nicholson answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      The best and worst explanation to this that I have heard so far is “Space is expanding into itself” that one hurt my brain soooo much. Space is expanding so as it expands it is making more space, the space it expands into didn’t exist until the space expanded to make it.

      Sorry I don’t have any better way of putting it :S

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