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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7765884" data-attributes="member: 177">It is at best indeterminate.  There is exactly zero evidence that the universe is finite.  What evidence we do have points to it being infinite.  Note that the universe can quite easily be infinite, and expanding.The basic way to have a finite universe is to have it be curved back around on itself (what we call "positive curvature") - the basic analogy is that an ant walking on a basketball is walking on a surface of positive curvature.  30+ years ago, this is what we kind of expected to see - a universe that had enough mater in it that its gravitation pulls the universe shut.  What we measure across the entire universe that we can see (the "visible universe" is about 90 billion light years across) is not that positive curvature, but is flat as a pancake.  flatter than the flattest thing you can imagine.  Or possibly a slight negative curvature.  So, for the basic way to have a finite universe, it must be far, far bigger than the universe that we can see, so that the positive curvature is so amazingly tiny that we cannot detect it.  The fact that the universe is not just expanding, but its expansion is accelerating, speaks even more to it not being closed off by mass...If you don't have the universe curve around and close in on itself, then it must have a boundary.  Boundaries are *very* messy, mathematically speaking.There's nothing in current accepted theories that require the universe be finite.   Overall, that stacks up to be a bit on the side of being infinite.</blockquote>

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