How small can the universe be while still appearing infinite?

I'm working on a concept of universe creation. The best way to describe it in a sentence is the Judeo-Christian Creation Story but from God's point of view.

My question is, staying as close to hard-physics as possible, what is the minimum amount of universe needed to be created to prevent humans from figuring it out. The mechanism of creation is handwaved at the moment, but the two I'm considering is a Dyson sphere type construction that would be built in the "higher" universe (so a sharing of actual space, but humans would effectively be in a confined area). The other option is a simulation. I'm leaning towards the simulation idea because of quantum mechanics propensity for not being "defined" until observed (like an RNG that doesn't generate data until needed). However, for either option, the following constraints are in place.

• 6,000-10,000-year-old universe
• must give the impression of a 13 billion-year-old universe

I'm less concerned with Earth itself since you can create something that looks old. It's more the celestial side of things that is giving me problems. Like how to make light appear to be coming from outside the limit of the universe. How big does the universe need to be to compensate for actual measurements taken from earth (like how we use the orbit of earth to get the distance of stars). Etc.

Voyager 1 is something like 11 billion miles away, so I guess that's the minimum. Certainly, it would be hard to get smaller than the solar system. But in a hard-science environment (at least inside the universe*) how small can I make it so that humanity would not figure it out with modern technology.

_{* What I mean is that inside the universe, physics is exactly like ours as we understand it right now (unless necessary for this concept to work). And so any limitations on the universe would have to be undetectable to modern equipment}

posted about 6 years ago

amflare‭

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