ACCORDING to the steady-state theory of the universe, new matter is continuously being created out of nothing^1,2. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, however, precludes the possibility of proving â nothingâ , that is, absence of energy, unless the time of observation is infinite. Now, whatever the explanation of the famous red-shift phenomenon in astronomy, the result is always a finite volume for the observable universe; any observer, irrespective of his position, finds himself in the centre of an analogous observable universe. On the Sandage scale³, and assuming a Euclidean space for simplicity, extrapolation of Hubble's law yields a value of about 1.3 Ã 10¹⁰ light years for the radius (R) of the theoretically observable universe.