In 1883, German astronomer Heinrich Olbers looked up into the night sky and saw darkness. He wondered that if the universe were infinite and eternally static then, surely shouldn’t the night sky shine with the light of infinite stars? Olbers paradox was so compelling that many considered it proof of a finite universe, a cosmos that at some point simply ends.

It wasn’t until a century later when Edwin Hubble, observational established the reality of an expanding universe, finally Olbers paradox was firmly solved. Olbers’s second assumption was wrong, the universe is not static. But what does modern astronomy have to say about the size of the universe?

In this YouTube film by Cool Worlds, we ask if the universe is finite and if so does that mean it has an edge or a boundary? Or could the universe be infinite?

Directed by: Cool Worlds