Because space is so large, we haven’t found where it ends yet! There are different theories on this though: some theories suggest that it goes on forever and some suggest that it folds back in on itself, a bit like a 3-dimensional roundabout! We know that the Universe is slowly expanding because we can measure it by looking into space with telescopes, but we can’t see an end to it.
There are different parts to space and some of those we know to have an end.
For example, we have the heliosphere, this is the space where the Earth, the Moon, the Sun and other planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter etc) in our solar system are. We know that the heliosphere definitely ends somewhere because we have sent the Voyager spacecraft to the edges.
These are still going now and are the furthest ever spacecraft to have travelled away from the Earth. They are older than me and were launched from Earth in 1977! You can have a look at how they are doing here: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov
We know from the data that they have arrived at the edges of the heliosphere and we know that outside of this is interstellar space..
Hi Daisy.
The simple answer is we don’t know. Space is soo very large that even if it does have an edge/end we wouldn’t be able to see. The universe has existed for 13.8 billion years old (13,800,000,000), thats almost 100 times longer than our Sun has existed, and about 340 times longer than the earth has existed. We know that the universe expands, and it has been expanding for all that time. This makes it a very large thing in deed. The current estimate of the size is around 93 billion light years across. That means if you stood at one end and turned on a flash light to signal your friend at the other it would take 93 billion years for the light to reach your friend, in miles thats 5.5×10^23 miles. Voyager, the furthest human object from earth is currently 11.7 billion miles away (11,700,000,000 miles, 11.7×10^9).
There are a few theories of how the universe looks and is shaped, some people think it is infinite, has no end, some think it is like a pringle and some thing it is like a donut and some people think it is flat and a disk, kind of like our galaxy. We know that it is expanding and that the expansion is speeding up, but as to how large it is and whether it is flat or curved, people are still talking about that. Hope that helps
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David commented on :
Hi Daisy.
The simple answer is we don’t know. Space is soo very large that even if it does have an edge/end we wouldn’t be able to see. The universe has existed for 13.8 billion years old (13,800,000,000), thats almost 100 times longer than our Sun has existed, and about 340 times longer than the earth has existed. We know that the universe expands, and it has been expanding for all that time. This makes it a very large thing in deed. The current estimate of the size is around 93 billion light years across. That means if you stood at one end and turned on a flash light to signal your friend at the other it would take 93 billion years for the light to reach your friend, in miles thats 5.5×10^23 miles. Voyager, the furthest human object from earth is currently 11.7 billion miles away (11,700,000,000 miles, 11.7×10^9).
There are a few theories of how the universe looks and is shaped, some people think it is infinite, has no end, some think it is like a pringle and some thing it is like a donut and some people think it is flat and a disk, kind of like our galaxy. We know that it is expanding and that the expansion is speeding up, but as to how large it is and whether it is flat or curved, people are still talking about that. Hope that helps
David