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Originally Posted by xelasnave
What a wonderful discussion.
Robert you raise an interesting aspect about the universe being infinite or not.
Alex
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By definition, if the universe is truly infinite, then the region of space that we humans have so far been able to detect of it with our available instruments , however grand it may seem to us in its physical scale, is by definition infinitely smaller than the Much Much More Vast regions of the whole universe. So it may be a fair analogy to think of the
so-far-observed part of the universe as being akin to a grain of sand in its size, as compared to a much larger section of the universe being like the entire Earth in its size.
By definition, the currently unobserved regions cannot be known about with certainty, though we can come up with many interesting theories about them; we cannot know for sure what precisely is beyond the observed region.....
volumes of space with differing expansion rates and/or differing physical laws? other universes? A supergiant wall of green cheese? Multiple copies of the Astrophysical Journal distributed throughout deep space? etc. etc.
(An entertaining and thought-provoking book on infinities of various sorts is "The Infinite Book" by John D. Barrow, who is one of the true Wild Men of physics and mathematics)
And we are to consider how often theory has proved to be Entirely in error when it comes to accurately describing and explaining a physical phenomenon, only to be later on Rescued and Corrected by the observations that are made of actual objects and phenomena,
e.g. nearly everything that theorists thought they reliably knew about the process of star formation has turned out to be Mostly Wrong now that Star Formation been turned into an observational science.
cheers, Robert