What comes after space?

Space seems to go on and on, but where does it end?

When you look up at a clear night sky, you see space: a vast, seemingly infinite expanse that contains everything humans know to exist. To find out what lies beyond, a good place to start is to figure out where the universe ends. The problem is, scientists don’t know where space ends or if it ends at all.

The observable universe

The furthest humans can see out into space, using all the technology currently available to us, is 46 billion light-years (a light-year is the distance that light can travel in one year, and is equal to about 9.5 million kilometres). The volume of space that humans can see is called the observable universe. We don’t know what is out there beyond this. Perhaps it’s more galaxies and stars and space. Perhaps it’s the edge of the universe. Some think that the universe is infinite, meaning space goes on forever in every direction. In this case, there is nothing after space, because space is everything.

Life on the edge