How big is the Universe?

Hello tuffers, an excellent question for starting an interesting path into the generally non-intuitive area of cosmology. I say generally non-intuitive, because it is non-intuitive to those of us regular-folks who hold so dearly to Newtonian mechanics. However, to those who study such things, I believe that the mechanics of cosmology are kind of intuitive? I dunno... I'm not that smart Anyway, just thought I'd take the time to add one more piece of information that made me sad when I heard it: Mr Jack is very correct in his description. The favourite analogy at this point is to think of ants walking around on a rubber skin. The ants moving around at top-ant-speed can represent photons moving around at the speed of light (other objects can move around at slower ant-speeds). However, if we stretch the rubber skin (space expanding), the ants get even farther apart. Even two ants who aren't moving will get farther apart because of the stretching space between them.One of the following conclusions is that two top-speed ants (representing light speed) may be moving directly towards each other, however the expansion of the rubber skin between them is so much that they are still getting farther apart.Therefore, without faster-than-light travel (seemingly impossible at this point) it is quite likely that there are parts of this universe that are even theoretically impossible for us to ever see or reach.My heart saddened a bit when I realized that Not sure why my heart was set on whizzing around the universe to places billions of light-years away... Also considering that even if faster-than-light travel is possible, it's highly unlikely that it would ever be developed in my life time (therefore, there's no real difference to myself).But, just the knowledge that even theoretical travel to certain areas of the universe may very well be impossible just makes me feel a bit... left out As far as the number for the size of the universe goes, I think it's important to remember that it's not simply a best-guess at the actual size of the universe. It's more a best-guess at the lower-bound for the actual size of the universe. That is, it's our best guess that the universe must be at least that big. But it's impossible (at the moment, I think?) for us to know, or even guess at, an upper-bound for the size of the universe.

Ahh... no worries. The only thing that can ever kill hope, is a lack of imagination. And the only thing that kills imagination is a lack of beer!Didn't you ever see The Neverending Story? For those of you who have seen it, this was news to me:

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As of June 2009, plans for a new movie adaptation of the book have been announced, although only at the very earliest stages of development. No writer, director, or cast have been decided upon yet.

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