The current width of the observable universe is about 90 billion light-years. And presumably, beyond that boundary, there's a bunch of other random stars and galaxies.
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.
Thanks to dark energy and the accelerated expansion of the Universe, it's physically impossible to even reach all the way to the edge of today's observable Universe; we can only get a third of the way there at maximum.
We can therefore see only those galaxies whose light has taken less than 13.82 billion years to reach us (about two trillion). Those galaxies exist in a sphere of space centred on the Earth that we call the 'observable Universe'.
Beyond our galaxy itself, which holds our solar system and everything beyond it, are other galaxies. The nearest galaxy is Andromeda, which will collide with the Milky Way galaxy in about 4 billion years. The Milky Way is part of the Local Group, which consists of 30 galaxies.
Practically, we cannot even imagine thinking of the end of space. It is a void where the multiverses lie. Our universe alone is expanding in every direction and covering billions of kilometres within seconds. There is infinite space where such universes roam and there is actually no end.
(TOS: "Is There in Truth No Beauty?") In actual fact, there is no purple band of 'negative energy' surrounding the rim of the Milky Way called the Galactic Barrier. However, the Milky Way is surrounded by the Galactic Halo, comprising of dark matter, star clusters, clouds of gas and a few lone old stars.
Tanya Hill, Astronomer - yes. There's a limit to how much of the universe we can see. The observable universe is finite in that it hasn't existed forever. It extends 46 billion light years in every direction from us.
Right now, in a 13.8 billion year old Universe, our current visibility limit is 46 billion light-years. Our future visibility limit is approximately 33% greater: 61 billion light-years. There are galaxies out there, right now, whose light is on the way to our eyes, but has not had the opportunity to reach us yet.
There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a "Big Bang" about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere.
Many religious persons, including many scientists, hold that God created the universe and the various processes driving physical and biological evolution and that these processes then resulted in the creation of galaxies, our solar system, and life on Earth.
As a universe, a vast collection of animate and inanimate objects, time is infinite. Even if there was a beginning, and there might be a big bang end, it won't really be an end. The energy left behind will become something else; the end will be a beginning.
At distances of 31 billion light-years, corresponding to a time of just 550 million years after the Big Bang, we reach the edge of what we call reionization: where the majority of the Universe is mostly transparent to optical light.
What is dark energy? It's one of the universe's biggest mysteries: more remains unknown than known about dark energy. It affects the universe's expansion, so physicists are able to infer that dark energy makes up roughly 68% of the universe and it appears to be somehow tied to the vacuum of space.
Dark matter — the unknown substance comprising 85 percent of all matter in the universe — is strange. But researchers are at least sure about one thing: Dark matter is everywhere.
The ultimate fate of an open universe is either universal heat death, a "Big Freeze" (not to be confused with heat death, despite seemingly similar name interpretation ; see §Theories about the end of the universe below), or a "Big Rip" – in particular dark energy, quintessence, and the Big Rip scenario – where the ...
The world as we know it has three dimensions of space—length, width and depth—and one dimension of time. But there's the mind-bending possibility that many more dimensions exist out there. According to string theory, one of the leading physics model of the last half century, the universe operates with 10 dimensions.
In about 100 trillion years, the last light will go out. The bad news is that the universe is going to die a slow, aching, miserable death. The good news is that we won't be around to see it.
The size of the whole universe is unknown, and it might be infinite in extent. Some parts of the universe are too far away for the light emitted since the Big Bang to have had enough time to reach Earth or space-based instruments, and therefore lie outside the observable universe.
As far as we can tell, there is no edge to the universe. Space spreads out infinitely in all directions. Furthermore, galaxies fill all of the space through-out the entire infinite universe. This conclusion is reached by logically combining two observations.
Space ships do not stop when they run out of fuel. While outer space does contain gas, dust, light, fields, and microscopic particles, they are in too low of a concentration to have much effect on spaceships. As a result, there is essentially zero friction in space to slow down moving objects.
In our standard view of things, consciousness exists only in the brains of highly evolved organisms, and hence it exists only in a tiny part of the universe and only in very recent history. According to panpsychism, consciousness pervades the universe and is a fundamental feature of it.
The technology required to travel between galaxies is far beyond humanity's present capabilities, and currently only the subject of speculation, hypothesis, and science fiction. However, theoretically speaking, there is nothing to conclusively indicate that intergalactic travel is impossible.
The location of the Great Attractor was finally determined in 1986: It is situated at a distance of somewhere between 150 and 250 Mly (million light-years) (47–79 Mpc) (the larger being the most recent estimate) away from the Milky Way, in the direction of the constellations Triangulum Australe (The Southern Triangle) ...
Even traveling at the speed of light, it would take nearly a hundred thousand years!