The"Big Bang" took place 13.78 billion years ago, and recently, a young galaxy has been discovered, which is aged at 400 million years, based upon it's red shift rate. A "chart" that shows the evolution of the Universe would take us from present day back to the Big Bang. The chart would show some stars, perhaps, existed at a age earlier than 400 million years, and the "ingredients" that would later form new ones and future galaxies. Now let's think about the outer edge. Most of you will agree it is 13.78 billion years old, but what defines it, and how far away would the averaged edge be? The mere fact that it is as far as we can detect it as of today? Nobody thinks that if one went to a edge, they would hit a form of "brick wall", or simply fall off, as if it were some type of weird polygon shape with a distinct boundary, which seems unreasonable. Is it then just empty blackness? Now it gets really interesting to me, and I posit this question. Even if it is black (which is a color) and lacks heat and molecular movement, or even molecules, does it not have a temperature ( 0 degrees K)? Before we came into existence, the materials that later form us were here.....but we, prior to birth, had no concept of black, red, yellow, white, hot cold, shape, anything. In 1843, to you and I nothing existed. But yet it did. If empty space, in a perfect vacuum is black and is cold, then is that not something? If the Universe continues to expand beyond this "edge", it will be a place or a region for new stars and galaxies to occupy. Nobody would want to go to a place that has nothing to offer but extreme cold and inky darkness to dance, sing, and chug beer...but that does not mean this "place" is not there. So does the edge of the Universe truly exists or not, and does the empty vacuum of space exists or not, whether dark energy is present or not?
It's reasonably possible that the universe is curved to itself bounding by evolution shells a few times.
Anyhow, no outer empty space can exist, because all the matter in the universe define all the space. The space without matter cannot exist.
The universe can seem to be euclidean if it is curved to itself at every single point cyclically.
Thank you both for your replies, I would like to read thoughts from others as well. I am in full agreement that space does not have a edge or "boundary", but is infinite. That's why I posited this question, there are others on Researchgate who have invested many years into the study of this type of thing. I have as always, argue that "all that is" never had a beginning, something existed before the Big Bang, as I firmly beleive the incredible amount of matter and energy post Big Bang could not be created from absolute nothingness.
Perhaps better posited "Does the blackness and void of empty space exist"...but the main objective is to find out what the all-in truth is about the edge, and whether there actually is one. "What we know is a drop of water. What we ignore is the ocean"- Isaac Newton
A bit of background just to confirm your comments and add some detail: the earliest objects we can see at present, as you say, are about 400 million years after a fiducial start about 13.8 billion years ago. Note that the JWST is being designed specifically to allow us to observe farther back than that present limit. The first stars are thought to have appeared at an age around 30 million to 130 millions years, and the "ingredients" that would later form those stars were the hydrogen and helium mix we see glowing as the CMB at a cosmic age of ~378 thousand years.
You ask: "Now let's think about the outer edge. Most of you will agree it is 13.78 billion years old, but what defines it,"
Two terms you should look up for a definition are the cosmological event horizon and the particle horizon. Davis and Lineweaver published a note explaining these and related terms, linked below.
You ask: "and how far away would the averaged edge be?"
That's a question that needs you to define your edge and the answer may surprise you if you haven't taken account of subsequent expansion. The material that emitted the CMB was just 41 million light years from us at the time the light was released, but it is 42 billion light years from us 'now'. The redshift of the CMB is z=1089 so the distance has expanded by a factor of z+1=1090 while the light was reaching us (hence we see it in the high microwave band).
Beyond the "edge", you ask "Is it then just empty blackness?". No, what lies beyond the limit of our observations is thought to be simply more of the same. We see no departure from large-scale uniformity, and the CMB is uniform in temperature and density to a few parts per million well beyond the most distant galaxies we can see, so extrapolating that is logical. Current credible models are therefore based the "Cosmological Principle" which postulates that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic when averaged over sufficiently large scales. The age of the universe limits what can be observed (hence the "observable universe") but doesn't limit its size which may well be infinite. It could be finite but is then thought to wrap round like the old "Asteroids" arcade game so till has no edge and has uniform density everywhere.
BL: ".. as if it were some type of weird polygon shape with a distinct boundary .."
One suggestion you might come across is whether the shape might be dodecahedral but with opposing faces "wrapped round" again so again there would be no boundary. That and other possibilities are covered in the third link below.
Newton: "What we know is a drop of water. What we ignore is the ocean"
Our view might be like that of a plankton in the Pacific, we observe a tiny fraction of the ocean and can only imagine it reaching on forever or perhaps wrapping round a planet without an edge (only in our case, it would have to wrap in all three dimensions).
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0310808
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe
According to the theory in the attached article, the universe came into existence from the fundamental substance of the universe which is all pervasive like empty space and is without any boundary. This fundamental substance is perfectly motionless and when it begins to move, it gives out quanta of energy. So the universe expands within this fundamental substance which people usually call empty space. The universe condenses out of this fundamental substance as ice freeze in an ocean. So the frozen part of the fundamental substance may have a boundary but the ocean of fundamental substance does not have a boundary. It is infinite and one without a second.
Article Unified field of consciousness
I want to thank all who have and contine to contribue time and effort to my query, it is very much appreciated.
There's a basic introductory tutorial by Prof. Ned Wright linked below if you want to take your study a bit farther.
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmo_01.htm
Since the distance to the horizon of the universe is infinite, there is no edge
Article The Infinite Distance Horizon and the Hyperbolic Inflation i...
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