[thedoc (OP)]

Jeff  asked the Naked Scientists:
   Hi Chris
 
How big is the Universe?
 
I understand that, give or take a decimal point, the Universe is 13.7 billion years old; light reaching my retina from the first proto-galaxies is also of that order in age. Light travelling in the opposite direction from these first-light objects has gone where? Perhaps it has simply been absorbed in the post Big Bang non-transparent 'mirk'?
 
But what if the light had been able to travel unimpeded, the Universe would now have a radius of at least 27.4 billion light years, approximately 6 times the volume of our present visible Universe. The most remote proto-galaxies we can see are surely no longer where they can be seen in our present day.
 
There must be a vast amount of matter beyond the CMB-veil, the stuff that the  pre-proto galaxies are made of (hydrogen, helium and free sub-atomic particles?); is this matter used in the calculation to estimate the total mass of the Universe.
 
Could an "Anti-matter Black-hole" exist in our Universe? If so, could the Big Bang have been triggered by a collision between a "normal matter" black-hole and an "anti-matter" black-hole?
 
 
Regards

Jeff Bull

What do you think?

[Pmb]

Nobody knows how large the universe is. If it's either flat or open then it's infinite in size.