Through The Wormhole

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Is There an Edge to the Universe?

By Craig Haggit, HowStuffWorks.com

Grasping Infinity

Except for mathematicians and physicists, most people don't like infinity. We like to know the extent of things. We can wrap our heads around measurements. Your car might be 10 feet long, your house is 2,000 square feet, the U.S. national debt is … well, some things are more finite than others.

But what about our universe? It's definitely big. Just how big and what shape it is consumes much of the debate in the world of cosmology. Calling it "our" universe is important, because today's most commonly accepted theory on the cosmos, string theory, says ours is but one space-time bubble among an infinite host of other parallel and bubbly universes. They cleverly call this a multiverse, and it's way more complex than most people would ever want to know.

To start simply, most astronomers agree that the three-dimensional aspect of our universe is pretty much boundless. Unfortunately that's also where the agreement seems to end and where the discussion gets quite complex, because now we start talking about energy and matter.