• Question: Do you think the universe comes to an end, if so, do you think there is anything on the outside of this boundary?

    Asked by Riah Apps to Deborah, Euan, Maheen, Rob, Stu on 16 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by Noivette, Jojo science.
    • Photo: Deborah Prunty

      Deborah Prunty answered on 16 Jun 2016:

      There are a couple of different theories on this. One is that the universe is still expanding. I don’t know what its expanding into though, as its supposed to be everything that exists… another is that its an infinite loop, that if we keep going in one direction as far as possible we’d eventually end up back where we started from. It’s not my area of knowledge though so I couldn’t really tell you what one is most likely.

    • Photo: Euan Allen

      Euan Allen answered on 19 Jun 2016:

      I’m not sure about anything outside of this universe, my brain starts to melt just thinking about what that would mean! I don’t think the universe will end, but it might just “restart”.

      One theory on how the universe might evolve is something we call the “big crunch”. This is the idea that the universe goes from the big bang and begins to get larger and larger and expand. It then runs out of energy and reaches a maximum size, where it then begins to contract again. It contracts faster and faster until it gets to a single point, and we then have another big bang! The process then starts all over again.

      I quite like this theory as it would mean that the universe has been around forever but in many different forms. It just resets after every big bang. This is just one of many theories though, so we really don’t know if the universe will end or where it came from.

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