We all know that space is big but how big is the easy answer is to just say hey it's infinte it's not like there's some wall at the end of the universe that you cannot pass through but we don't know if the universe really does go on forever and even if it did that might
not mean it was truly infinite what if it's like the surfaceof the earth you can go around the globe forever and never find the edge if the universe is like the surface of the earth but may be in three dimensions instead of two it wouldn't have an edge but it also wouldn't be infinite or would it in math you can think about infinity as just adding one to whatever biggest number someone can come up with but you also find infinity between any two numbers just keep dividing the distance in half every time you do you find a new number and there's no reason you'd ever have to stop if you think about 3d space this means that no matter how close togather two locations might be you can always find another point between them so even if the universe has a fixed size it might still contain an infinity of locations but that's math and math doesn't always match up with physical reality in the physical world can you really keep dividing and dividing space as long as you like yes and no you're to keep dividing down form meters to centimeterto millimeter to a nanometer to atom meter but once you get down to lenth of around 10 to the negative thirty fifty meters you start to run into problems according to some thoeries when you get down to this scale the uncertainity principle that makes it impossible to tell whether a particle here or there and if there is no way to tell the difference between one locationand another they might be the same place which means that as far as we know 10 to the negative thirty fifth meters is the smallest possible length there is so the universe may or may not be infinite in length and it probably can't hold things that are infinitely small so what does that mean for the question of how big space really is well we can go on what we do know the observable universe is a sphere with a radius of around 406.5 billion light years that's rough 10 to the 26 th meters which is like 10 to the 60 first of the smallest possible lengths but that's just the radius if you want to make sure to count all of space you have to take thr volume which is arround ten 10 the one hundred and eightieth small as possible oops that's 1 with 180 zero is following it and you can think of it as counting every single unique place in the universe so how big is that let's say it takes you a minute togather a thousand of those smallest possible cubes to make a new layer cune then another minute to take a thousand of these new cubes and make an even large one using this process it would make you hour to build a cube the size of the observable universe and is mind -boggling huge as that is it's probably only the smallest that the universe can be
not mean it was truly infinite what if it's like the surfaceof the earth you can go around the globe forever and never find the edge if the universe is like the surface of the earth but may be in three dimensions instead of two it wouldn't have an edge but it also wouldn't be infinite or would it in math you can think about infinity as just adding one to whatever biggest number someone can come up with but you also find infinity between any two numbers just keep dividing the distance in half every time you do you find a new number and there's no reason you'd ever have to stop if you think about 3d space this means that no matter how close togather two locations might be you can always find another point between them so even if the universe has a fixed size it might still contain an infinity of locations but that's math and math doesn't always match up with physical reality in the physical world can you really keep dividing and dividing space as long as you like yes and no you're to keep dividing down form meters to centimeterto millimeter to a nanometer to atom meter but once you get down to lenth of around 10 to the negative thirty fifty meters you start to run into problems according to some thoeries when you get down to this scale the uncertainity principle that makes it impossible to tell whether a particle here or there and if there is no way to tell the difference between one locationand another they might be the same place which means that as far as we know 10 to the negative thirty fifth meters is the smallest possible length there is so the universe may or may not be infinite in length and it probably can't hold things that are infinitely small so what does that mean for the question of how big space really is well we can go on what we do know the observable universe is a sphere with a radius of around 406.5 billion light years that's rough 10 to the 26 th meters which is like 10 to the 60 first of the smallest possible lengths but that's just the radius if you want to make sure to count all of space you have to take thr volume which is arround ten 10 the one hundred and eightieth small as possible oops that's 1 with 180 zero is following it and you can think of it as counting every single unique place in the universe so how big is that let's say it takes you a minute togather a thousand of those smallest possible cubes to make a new layer cune then another minute to take a thousand of these new cubes and make an even large one using this process it would make you hour to build a cube the size of the observable universe and is mind -boggling huge as that is it's probably only the smallest that the universe can be


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