Here's the question: Do you think the universe existed and will exist forever, or do you think it had a beginning sometime and will have an end?


Debate.
I'll add in my opinions into the thread later.

This is a good topic for debate, but do you really think a bunch of 13 year olds on a stick figure animating forum are going to get anywhere with this?

Well, I hope the 13 year-olds will stay out and let the guys who know shit do their stuff.

Read a book if you want to know more about the theories of the universe.

It does extend to a point I would say, and that point we will never reach. Poor technology is incapable to get that far.

The begning as in when and how it was created? There are many theories for this as well, however the big bang theory seems the most accurate to me.

eating, will talk later;
this can go on forever, so lets not bring any religion into this topic like the previous related topics

If anybody will bring religion into this, I will take care of him personally.

I'll actually subscribe myself to this thread, and I never subscribe to threads.

I think we can't really know this, since our technology, as Nobody previously stated. I agree with the theory though, that our universe keeps expanding. And one day it will collapse and destroy everything, though nobody will be alive to see it.

I figure it is, since you can't really, end space and time. I mean, what is there supposed to be? A huge wall keeping everyone else out, 876,876,234,765,234,654 million light years away from here?

Of course, didn't you know that?

Silly-head.

But it's actually exactly 133,333,333,333,333,333,333,337 million light years away from here. Earth is just that leet.

Yeah. Geocentrism.

Lol, no more sarcasm.

I think some people are confused about the term "infinite universe".
I am speaking of time, people.
Not space.
It's obvious that we won't know for quite a long time where the universe ends, space-wise.
I'm talking about the universe's age.
Did it have a beginning?
Is it infinite?Will it have an end?

And yes, like people who are important said: no religion.
Try to prove your respective points with science and logic.

Personally, I don't believe the universe is infinite. How can it be?
The 2nd law of Thermodynamics specifically says "Entropy works".
So, if the universe is continually running out of usable energy, and it never gets "refilled", the universe must have started somewhere.
Also, from the geological and chemical point of view, the universe can't be infinite.
Why? Well, look at radioactive elements. They always decay, over time, into more stable elements. If the Universe was infinite, we would have run out of radioactive elements a whole helluvu long time ago, wouldn't you say?
Yet here on earth we happen to have Uranium, plutonium, and others.

I guess the Universe could last forever.

But nobody knows...

Actually, there's scientific proof that the universe is finite. In the cosmic background radiation images, the electromagnetic wavelengths stop appearing after a certain very large wavelength - scientists believe that this is the size of the universe, because there can't be waves longer than the universe itself.


Well, back to Doomy's point. I think that the universe began at some point very long ago (but not forever) and before then there was NOT a tiny little point of matter like the Big Bang used to state.

What I think is, every couple hundred billion years or so, there's another Big Bang, but these are not what people think they are - this Big Bang is where, when the density of the universe is approaching zero, the universe actually bounces off of another universe which causes the energy left over in the form of photons and dark matter to instantly convert back into a sea of quarks. The universe cycles through this for extremely long periods, I think. (EDIT: this means that the potential energy in the "dead" matter that isn't moving is released as heat/kinetic both through breaking down the particles and by jostling them up a hell of a lot)

This isn't as reliable as the Big Freeze theory (universe cools to zero) but I can't go with that, because it assumes space is infinite or flat.

Quote from Smashdood

Well, back to Doomy's point. I think that the universe began at some point very long ago (but not forever) and before then there was NOT a tiny little point of matter like the Big Bang used to state.

What I think is, every couple hundred billion years or so, there's another Big Bang, but these are not what people think they are - this Big Bang is where, when the density of the universe is approaching zero, the universe actually bounces off of another universe which causes the energy left over in the form of photons and dark matter to instantly convert back into a sea of quarks. The universe cycles through this for extremely long periods, I think. (EDIT: this means that the potential energy in the "dead" matter that isn't moving is released as heat/kinetic both through breaking down the particles and by jostling them up a hell of a lot)

So, like... the Oscillating Universe Theory?
The Universe expands, then recontracts, then expands again, and so on and so forth?

The problem with Oscillating Universe theory is that, like when you throw a bouncy ball, after each bounce, the ball looses some energy until it finally has no energy whatsoever when it stops bouncing.

The same would be true of the universe after each bang, and expansion, it would lose a little of it's usable energy until it had no usable energy left.
Also another problem is that if this were true, we would see the universe expanding slower and slower as it neared the apex of it's expansion.
However, this isn't the case.
The universe is actually expanding faster and faster.

If the universe is infinite, that means it can't have had a beginning. it would be static. No galaxies would be moving, and they would have always had to have been there. (If it were infinite, then for a beginning to occur, everything would have had to of popped into existance at the same time. That means a universe infinite in scope would also have to be infitite in age.)

In an infinite, static universe, there are an infinite amount of stars. What this would mean is that every point in the sky would end in a star, because light would have been. Therefore, the entire sky would constantly be at least as bright as our sun, because light would have had an infinite amount of time to arrive at our planet. However, since light heats up every surface it touches, any object in the universe which is lit by an infinite amount of stars for an infinite amount of time would have to be infinitely hot. The goldilocks values (Not too much, not too little, but just right) of our universe wouldn't be present.

An infinite universe is impossible given the behavior of light and it's relation to time.

Plus, our observations contridict the possibility as well. We have SEEN that the universe is expanding, so that means that it was once all in one place. It had a beginning, and so would require an infinite amount of time to expand to infinity.

@DoD: You're forgetting that the curvature of spacetime, nuclear fission, and loads of other factors create energy as well.

Quote from Ash

In an infinite, static universe, there are an infinite amount of stars. What this would mean is that every point in the sky would end in a star, because light would have been. Therefore, the entire sky would constantly be at least as bright as our sun, because light would have had an infinite amount of time to arrive at our planet.

I'm not sure about this. I think you're making a logical mistake here, as you're wrong about the infinity of the stars. Of course there are infinite stars in the universe, but the universe is infinite, so it doesn't matter how close they're packed, because there's infinite space. Hard to explain, hard to imagine.

Do you mean that you don't think an infinite universe would require an infinite amount of stars? Well, why would the stars just suddenly stop being produced after a certain distance from a prescribed point? That would require some set limitation to the otherwise infinite scope of the universe, but there is no physical precedent for limitations simply due to the preferences of observers.