• Question: is the universe everlasting and if it isn't, how many galaxys are there?

    Asked by 10skyrimakj to Ross on 16 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by bubbles.
    • Photo: Ross King

      Ross King answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      Amazing question – it makes my head hurt sometimes thinking about the universe and how complex it is!

      I’m not sure if the universe is everlasting. Certainly, everything that we are able to see and observe is within our universe – we cannot see ‘outside it’, if there even is an outside! Some people also think that our universe goes through cycles of getting bigger and then shrinking down on itself again. It could be that in time the universe shrinks back down to the point where it doesn’t exist, before expanding again! Isn’t it so hard to think about?!

      To answer your second point, there are many many galaxies inside our universe and we definitely don’t know the exact number, or even close to how many there might be. The Hubble telescope made observations and from these we *think* there might be about 100 BILLION galaxies in the universe and this number will probably rise to about 200 billion as our telescopes get better. I can’t even imagine that number, let alone how many galaxies there might be! :S

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