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As the measurements show the flatness of our universe is approximately 1 but the measurements are with a slight error. If we assume that the flatness is greater than 1 but still within the error of measurements, how big would the universe be?

I understand that the total size of the universe would thus be much bigger than the visible universe, but how much?

safesphere
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Krumuvecis
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    https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/33897/based-off-of-the-study-that-found-the-universe-has-a-positive-curvature-how-big – Keith McClary Nov 16 '19 at 23:03
  • If cosmic inflation happened, the entire universe is vastly larger than the observable part, even if both are finite. – G. Smith Nov 17 '19 at 03:16
  • @G.Smith Why would the inflation change the size ratio of the observable universe to the entire uninverse? – safesphere Nov 17 '19 at 08:11
  • @safesphere I can’t explain why, but Wikipedia says “According to the theory of cosmic inflation ... if it is assumed that inflation began about $10^{−37}$ seconds after the Big Bang, then with the plausible assumption that the size of the universe before the inflation occurred was approximately equal to the speed of light times its age, that would suggest that at present the entire universe's size is at least $3\times 10^{23}$ times the radius of the observable universe.” The source is one of Guth’s books. – G. Smith Nov 17 '19 at 17:45
  • @safesphere What I can explain is that one of the motivations for inflation was solving the “flatness problem”. It does so by making the observable universe a small fraction of the entire universe, so that it appears to be flat just like a small part of the Earth’s surface appears to be flat. – G. Smith Nov 17 '19 at 18:03

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