Space and Perspective

Does space go on forever? I like this question because a yes answer and a no answer both seem absurd. My mind can't conceive of space going on forever, or of space not going on forever, and yet it seems that one of the two must be true. This is different than thinking about things like other dimensions or the afterlife because it's just plain physically there for us to (partially) observe and wonder about.

"And it came to pass that Moses looked, and beheld the world upon which he was created; and Moses beheld the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created; of the same he greatly marveled and wondered. . . . And he said unto himself: Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed."

     - Moses 1, Pearl of Great Price

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

     - Carl Sagan

"'Space,' it says, 'is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen . . . .'"

     - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

See also The Galaxy Song.