Tuesday, 29 September 2015

What is the volume of the universe?

Based on your comments, I think your confusion comes from having seen the classic rugby ball-shaped image of the CMB.
The CMB we observe is not from the whole cosmos, but only from a thin and completely spherical shell centered on us, with a radius RmathrmCMBsimeq45.6,mathrmGly (using a Planck 2015 cosmology). Just as the shell of Earth can be projected onto a rugby-shaped figure using a Mollweide projection, so can the shell of the CMB. Here's a figure from Universe Adventure that can help visualize:



projection



Although we (still) can't see beyond the CMB, the observable Universe is all the way out to redshift z=infty, while the CMB comes from zsimeq1100, but the difference is not big; Rmathrmobs.Uni.simeq47,mathrmGly. Thus, the volume of the observable Universe is
V=frac4pi3Rmathrmobs.Uni.3=435,!000,mathrmGly3.



The total Universe is probably much, much larger, and may in fact easily be infinite.

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