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What Lies Beyond the Known Universe?

-- | June 27, 2015

Question: Do dimensions really exists? [Also,] are the black holes really or possibly portals leading to different dimensions (like a whole new universe or a totally different universe)?  [Also,] right now I read in the blog about like the diameter of universe being 96 billion light years (in other sense the universe being confined within these 96 billion light years diameter) so what lies beyond that diameter?  — Pravesh

Answer: One can speculate or theorize as to what exists beyond that which we can measure, but that is, strictly speaking, not science.  What scientists do is make observations of the universe and apply the laws of physics to those observations to interpret what they observe.  As there are no actual observations which can tell us what lies beyond a black hole or the edge of the universe, we can only speculate or theorize as to what might lie beyond what we observe.  To my knowledge there are no theoretical predictions which are based on physics which predict what lies beyond black holes or the edge of the universe, which leaves us only speculation, which is not science.  So, a scientist would answer that there is no information to tell us what lies beyond a black hole or the edge of the universe.

Jeff Mangum