Consider the elegance of the paradox: it is one which the human mind is completely incapable of resolving. For space to materially exist, it should be quantifiable and therefore finite. But if that is the case, we are faced with a boundary; something else must therefore exist beyond the whole system. Since we know that space does exist, what might lie beyond it: heaven; hell; another dimension; God? There could be another parallel universe similar to own. And beyond that universe, how many more might there be - could there be an infinite number? If the answer to that question is ‘no’, because infinity cannot physically exist, then we must again consider what lies beyond the boundary of this even more complex system.

It may be tempting to reverse this logic and propose that an infinite God also cannot exist because, as we have already noted, nothing can exist which is not quantifiable. However, we must understand that this criterion is only valid within our own four-dimensional universe which consists of three physical dimensions plus the fourth dimension of time. If the God who created the universe does exist, he will necessarily have created time and space and will therefore not be constrained by these laws.

The Christian belief that God created the heavens and the Earth is sometimes challenged with the question: who then created God? The biblical answer is that God was not created. The popular alternative theory offers no answer: the Big Bang theory which gives scientists a reference point for the start of time, does not actually provide for an absolute beginning because it does not account for the existence of the material which exploded. So whatever your view, it is interesting to note that the subject of infinity is closely related to our very existence.

The Big Bang theory has been deduced from the observation that the material in space is rapidly moving away from us. This is evident because the wavelength of the light which has travelled to us from these distant bodies has become lengthened and appears at the red end of the visible spectrum: this is known as the red shift. The astronomer, ‘Edwin Hubble … announced his dramatic findings37’ in 1929. Hubble interpreted this information to propose that there must have therefore been a time when the material was concentrated together.

The mono-bloc of matter must have exploded scattering debris far into space: this has presumably cooled down to form the stars and planets we have today. Since we are able to measure the rate at which the universe is expanding, it has been possible to calculate the amount of time it would take for the matter we can observe today, to travel from a single point to its present location. Hence, it has been possible to put a figure on the age of the universe. Taking into account the cosmological constant - the observation that the rate of expansion itself is also increasing - it turns out to be a staggering fourteen billion years old.