Geraldine asked:

What is at the end of the universe...and don't say that it goes on forever...if it does what is behind
forever?

============

Why shouldn't I say it goes on forever? Why shouldn't it? What if I said it went on for X zillion
light-years... then what? Look, suppose that whatever it is that "space" is, stopped after some
distance. Now, how would we be able to know that, since we can only measure within and with
space? Let's say that the universe is a 4-dimensional sphere, 100 zillion light-years across (a zillion is
a number that I've just made up which is less than infinity, ok?). So it's finite. But we can only travel
around inside it, around and around. We can't see out, we can't go out, and when we get to an edge,
we just get turned around so that we're headed back inside. All we can do is go around and around.
What's the "end" of that? Space has no end, then, does it. Is there an "outside"? But there's no way to
have one, is there, because spacestops there. Or to put it another way, the universe, if it's like that, is
anysize, and nosize, because there's no way to measureit, since it's allthe space there is. There's
nothing to compare it to, so its "outside" size is anything,or nothing,or a meaningless idea.

Alternatively, let's say that the universe isa finite sized sphere, and there isspace outside it. How
large is it? Well... a zillion light-years. What's outside it? Space, empty space... why? Because I just
said so.

Alternatively, let's say that there are multiple "universes", in different dimensions, or something like
that. Ok, now where does thatstop? Hey, there are a zillionof them, right? Or maybe there are an
infinite number... but what's the difference between saying that and saying that thisuniverse goes on
forever... which you don't wantme to say. Maybe there are a finite number of finite-sized universes; a
finite number of infinite-sized universes in different dimensions; an infinite number of finite-sized
universes...; an infinite number of infinite-sized universes. I'm just running through the possibilities
here...

Let's put this another way. If you read Kant and similarly-minded philosophers, what they say is that
"space" is a construct of the human mind, created by us to understand the flux we're immersed in.
That's all. So it's something wecreated to understand something else... which we can only
understand in terms of that concept; we don't haveany otherway to understand it. So... the "size",
the "edge", the "behind" of the world, and so, the universe... those are all things that come out of us,
to help us cope with whatever's around us. But whatever that is, doesn't have "size" by itself, or
"edges", or any of those things... we just make those up to help us get a handle on it. So then your
question must either relate to us, human beings, or it's just simply meaningless, because we don't
knowwhat the world "really" is. But if it relates to us, then what's at the end of the universe is what we
put there... which brings us back to the "zillion" discussion above.

Steven Ravett Brown

59