How large was the universe when the sun and solar system began to form?
Question:
Answer:
We will probably never be able to measure the universe in any terms other than "infinite." While it is not actually infinite, for all practical terms it is, because even if we got into a space ship and traveled in one "direction" for ever and ever, the universe would expand faster than we would travel and we would essentially be traveling forever.
Anyhow, I think a more practical and answerable question would be how old was the universe when the sun was born, and that answer would be ~14 - 4.5 billion years, so about 9.5 billion years old.
We can never know. We don't even know how big it is right now, so we cannot run the universe backward 4.5 billion years.
Big. Very... big.
More Questions & Answers...