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Asked by Mason The Amazing :) to Andrew, Hina, Ian, Kathryn, Leah-Nani, Xu on 14 Jun 2018.
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Kathryn Burrows answered on 14 Jun 2018:
In theory ever, but the concept of infinite (things extending forever) is a tricky one. Mathematics can handle infinites but we do not necessarily know of anything in the real world that does. The real world seems to be full of things which are most certainly not extending forever. But models are not reality and gravity is a model so it can happily be infinite.
There is another way in which gravity does not extend forever. The influence of gravity goes down greatly with distance such that far away from a mass the influence can be considered so small as to no longer be there.
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Andrew Margetts-Kelly answered on 20 Jun 2018:
No and yes.
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Gravity is present all over the universe yes, all the way to the end of the universe (but the universe isn’t infinitely big so gravity, just like the universe doesn’t go on “forever”).
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Adding to the “no” is that not all parts of the universe see all the gravity of all the mass in the universe. Very simplistically, gravity is “made” by certain subatomic particles; these are the subatomic particles that gives matter its mass. Gravity moves at the speed of light, so if you created some new mass from from some energy, it’s gravity will never reach the end of the universe.
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