Re: Universe: finite/infinite, closed/open

[Lisa Gardner <iamlisa@TAMPABAY.RR.COM>]

Hi

I need help too. Is there really only one universe? Why can't there be
many of these universes in a mega-verse?
It seems intuitive to me that each universe would be finite, because
at some point there will be a loss of energy so that things would
start getting attracted back into itself.

Thank you for any clarification.

Lisa Gardner (age 9)

> > I think the quoted statement is trivial, because
> astronomers *define* open
> > and closed to mean infinite and non-infinite respectively.
>  (There's
> > nothing "fundamental" or "in principle" about it.)
>
> I need further tutoring:
>
> I thought "open" and "closed" were used to describe whether
> the Universe
> would collapse or not -- ie whether the Universe would
> expand forever or at
> some point start to contract to an eventual Big Crunch.
>
> But this aside for a moment --and whether we can actually "see" (by
> whatever means) to the "edge" of the Universe -- doesn't the current
> standard model assume that the Universe is finite in size
> -- although I
> don't know what that would mean:  There could be no one
> standing outside
> the Universe with a large caliper to measure the size.  Or
> maybe there is ....
>
> I clearly need tutoring here.
>
>
> Jim Green
> mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
> http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen