• Question: Is space ever end?

    Asked by anon-210273 to Maria on 5 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Maria Walach

      Maria Walach answered on 5 Mar 2019:


      Hi Daisy,

      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..

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