Let mathematicians have their imaginary infinities and their untested and untestable 13.7 billion year nonsense. We physicists have two real infinities: infinite space and infinite time.

See the discussion at: "Test your critical thinking."

@yvilletom I realized early on with my astronomy interests that the more we learn and answer questions, the more we realize what we do not know. Of course the 13.7 is our best guesstimate right now. Check back in fifty years and it will have changed I'm sure. (Or is that even up for grabs)?

@yvilletom O, I forgot, at the end of the universe is a brick wall anyway. On my shoulder, a tap-tap, eh, what's on the other side of the brick wall?

@starwatcher-al

The brick wall at the end of the universe. Is that from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide story, which I thoroughly enjoyed a year ago, a mere forty years after it first appeared?

Over at the Critical Thinkers group, a few days ago I posted some of Edwin Hubble’s words about the 13.7 billion years figure (which is not up for grabs). Here they are. Let me know your thoughts about them.

• . . . if redshifts are velocity shifts which measure the rate of expansion, the expanding models are definitely inconsistent with the observations that have been made . . . expanding models are a forced interpretation of the observational results.* — E. Hubble, Ap. J., 84, 517, 1936

For the entire short discussion, click on the link below.
Visit: "Test your critical thinking."

@yvilletom I never read that book, must do so sometime. No, the brick wall I came up with when I was a teenager. As far as the red shift, another explanation could be that the light just gets tired. After all it's traveling a tremendous distance through a universe that does have dust in it which might rob it of it's energy.

Olbers' paradox is really interesting, the light from the distant universe just has not gotten here yet. An amazingly it was Edger Allen Poe who gave the answer beating out the astronomers of the time.

@starwatcher-al

Olbers’ conclusion is not a paradox. The light from any distant-enough place has too little energy to trigger a response.