Has the universe got a top and bottom? (2024)

FAQs

Does the universe have a top and bottom? ›

The Universe is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but a combination of both that implies it was born with an almost scale-invariant spectrum.

The North Pole is the top of the earth. And the South Pole is the bottom, of course. Except that the earth is kind of a ball, and they don't really have tops and bottoms. Granted, the earth isn't exactly spherical, and it's spinning through space, spinning about an imaginary axis of rotation.

Space images are conventionally shown from the perspective of Earth's northern hemisphere, with their north poles at the top of the image. Although this image may seem upside down compared to most photos of Jupiter, it's a great reminder that there really is no “up” or “down” in space.

Now, thanks to detailed maps showing the faint echo of the Big Bang — what astronomers call the “cosmic microwave background” — we know the universe is 13.82 billion year old, give or take 10 million years. It's a staggering achievement in “precision cosmology.” But we don't have all the answers about our universe.

The tippy-top of the Earth — the North Pole — is the most northern point you can reach on our planet, while the very bottom of our planet is marked by the South Pole: the southernmost point on our surface, located in Antarctica.

The trite answer is that both space and time were created at the big bang about 14 billion years ago, so there is nothing beyond the universe. However, much of the universe exists beyond the observable universe, which is maybe about 90 billion light years across.

One thing's for sure: the Universe does not have an edge. There's no physical boundary – no wall, no border, no fence around the edges of the cosmos. This doesn't necessarily mean that the Universe is infinitely large though.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, the universe has no center, and it has no boundary. The idea of a Big Bang acting like a giant fireworks explosion hurtling matter and energy outward is pervasive, but misleading. As bizarre as it sounds, it wasn't “stuff” that exploded outward, it was space itself!

The Earth doesn't have a “bottom.” If you are referring to the way maps and globes are commonly oriented with north at the top, the part that is then at the bottom of those depictions is the Southern Hemisphere, with the southernmost continent being Antarctica.

The universe will become extremely dark after the last stars burn out. Even so, there can still be occasional light in the universe. One of the ways the universe can be illuminated is if two carbon–oxygen white dwarfs with a combined mass of more than the Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.4 solar masses happen to merge.

Is space infinite? ›

The universe is thought to be infinite, but there is still the possibility that it is closed and finite. There wouldn't be any edges, but it would connect back into itself. In a closed universe it would loop back around into itself.

The number 42 is, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, no one knows what the question is.

By applying the new exoplanet data to the universe's 2 x 10 to the 22nd power stars, Frank and Sullivan find that human civilization is likely to be unique in the cosmos only if the odds of a civilization developing on a habitable planet are less than about one in 10 billion trillion, or one part in 10 to the 22nd ...

Nothing. Above, below, left, right, in front, and behind are all part of the Universe. Nothing that might exist outside of the Universe can be described in its terms. If it could be described in those terms, it would by definition be part of the Universe.

The question of whether black holes have a bottom is a complex one that has been debated by scientists for many years. Some scientists believe that a black hole does have a bottom, known as a singularity, while others believe that black holes do not have a definite bottom.

One thing's for sure: the Universe does not have an edge. There's no physical boundary – no wall, no border, no fence around the edges of the cosmos. This doesn't necessarily mean that the Universe is infinitely large though.