boggling...
 

sorry if some one posted about this i couldnt find it when i searched :/

anyways...... i always wodered if i could just fly out into the universe and keep going forever where will it end? is there an end ? wow jsut thinking about it makes me wanna comtimplate suicide (thats was a joke)....any ideas ?

Depends of the curvature of space time. Some scientists postulate that the universe is "closed", i.e. it is finite. So if you continued in a straight line in a particular direction, you would end up in the same place you started from, in a similar way that if you start in say New York and travel East, you will eventually circumnavigate the globe and end up back in New York again.
Others suggest that the Universe is "open". What that entails is a little harder to grasp, but in essence it means that, yes you could continue on in the same direction indefinately, and would never come to an "end".
To know for sure, we would nead some way to accurately measure the curvature of spacetime on the very large scale.

CSfilm,

That's the whole point of trying to determine how much "dark matter" there is in the universe as well as if the neutrino has mass.

Enough matter == enough gravitational force == a closed universe.

Yeah.... but we still don't know...that was my point.

I still contend that our universe is just one big snow globe for an outside being -- probably some brat kid no doubt.

If anyone ever used to watch Animaniacs, they had quite a song describing the nature of the universe.

supposing the rest of the universe follows OUR laws of physics... either it is ever expanding or it isn't; so you'd keep going or find a wall.

since OUR laws of physics probably dont pertain to the entire universe, im sure many things could happen.

I think it is soo vast that it would be impossible to ever completely explore.

since there is no way to test any of these hypothesis, your question is left unanswered, as many are about our universe.

Modest Mouse - 3rd Planet
The universe is shaped exactly like the Earth
If you go straight long enough you'll end up where you were


I completly agree :)

If the universe was closed like CSflim said, then an ever expanding universe would also be an ever contracting universe at the same time?

Think of the universe expanding just like the earth getting bigger. It doesn't change its shape, just the space that it occupies.

Hmmm....now we're falling over words! I hate it when that happens!

Anyway, the universe as in the physical lumps of rock, planets and stars etc is expanding. It is also very definately finite.

However the SPACE that all of this occuring in was what I was referring to as the universe. It would be unlikely that this space would be changing shape.

I think that there are different laws of physics in different parts of the universe, and that the laws change over time. I also think that we don't really need to know this stuff unless we are really serious about exploring the universe and spend as much money on it as we do on arming ourselves to the teeth.

Any chance of offering up to us a bit of evidence for such a claim?

off topic, but when I entered this thread I thought it said "blogging"...