• Question: What is at the end of the universe ?

    Asked by anon-223711 to Valerio, Sreejita, Sam, Kate, Anastasia, Adam on 21 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Sreejita Ghosh

      Sreejita Ghosh answered on 21 Nov 2019:

      Difficult question. The universe is still expanding and therefore its ‘end’ is yet to be defined.

    • Photo: Adam Wootton

      Adam Wootton answered on 21 Nov 2019:

      We don’t know. We have the ‘observable universe’, which is basically everything in the entire universe that we can see. We don’t know if there’s anything at all beyond that! Of course, Douglas Adams suggested that there’s a nice restaurant at the end of the universe:

    • Photo: Anastasia Aliferi

      Anastasia Aliferi answered on 21 Nov 2019:

      We don’t know! We’ve only manage to observe a tiny bit of the universe so far and as Sreejita said it’s still expanding.

    • Photo: Sam Lawrence

      Sam Lawrence answered on 22 Nov 2019:

      To add to the other’s answers, the Universe is still expanding but scientists believe there’s ultimately three fates. Either the 1) Universe keeps expanding forever 2) the Universe expands for now but eventually slows down and the Universe reaches some stable size or 3) the expansion of the Universe stops and reverses leading to a “big crunch”. Each of these outcomes is dependent on the amount of mass-energy in the Universe. There are two main forces at play when talking about the expansion of the Universe. The outward push set by the initial Big Bang and dark energy, there’s also gravity which is dependent on how much mass-energy the Universe contains. The winner (largest) of these forces will dictate the end of the Universe!

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