Its a wonderful universe
let’s start with the thought experiment
imagine that our universe is infinite
and expands
with particles distributed roughly
equally around the space
what will such a universe be like first
because there are only so many ways to
arrange particles together in a certain
area of space
given enough chance everything that can
happen
under the laws of physics will happen in
the infinite universe
this will happen an infinite amount of
times for every moment
that has passed and every moment that is
to come
every moment you’ll be listening to this
talk an infinite amount of times
and then for the next number of you will
be listening to me rapidly about how
many times you listen to me rambling
about to you
forever in fact light years away
you would have really listened to this
talk an infinite number of times
because all the possible particle
arrangements are realized
almost all the books and movies and tv
shows that we enjoy
would occur in reality infinitely from
the start of the universe
to its end and all of our life all that
we experience
however you regret and every triumph
every love
and every hate every smile and every
tear
will occur and reoccur eternally
your birth and your death the day you
enter college and the day that you
graduate the day of your marriage and
the day
when your first child was born will all
in its infinite
universe play out in symphony
for the eons before and the eons to come
your life is of infinite size and span
across an infinite amount of space
in such a universe in some sense
we’re never dead we just
live and die continually
doesn’t this sound beautiful certainly
every time i return to my thought
experiment
my mind is filled with awe and hope
there’s almost something divine and
sacred
about this infinite universe
i’m not the first to posit such an
experiment
nietzsche also talked about eternal
recurrence
the idea that we will forever
re-experience the life that we are
having now
again and again until infinity
bonito was not so in love with the idea
as i am
he called it the greatest burden and he
said in one of his books that
if this thought were to gain possession
of you it would change you as you are
or perhaps crush you
nietzsche looked at eternal recurrence
with fear but i believe that we’re also
justified to embrace it in joy
to me this kind of infinite universe
seems to endow our life
with some deeper meaning for our life
all that we have experienced in an
infinite world like this will be
unceasing
and eternal this is the dream of the
ancient greeks when played to imagine
his world reforms
if the universe releases really so
it would be a pretty wonderful universe
yes but what’s the point of imagining a
world like this
it is fun but surely it’s to absurd a
hypothesis
to be taken seriously actually
you may have already seen this coming
from how i’ve set up this
recent advances in cosmology suggests
that this infinite universe
may actually be a physical possibility
the theory is called the quilted
universe
the entire process of reasoning involves
a few
brief steps first we have to assume that
the distribution of matter across the
universe
is relatively even on the large scale
actually einstein assumed there’s an
interior of general relativity
to make his equations calculable and he
named it
the cosmological principle this is by
far supported by
observation this
assumption contains the shape of the
universe into four possible
choices either a sphere a satellite
shape
or two kinds of flat shapes this is
dependent
on the curvature of the universe if the
universe is curved positively
it will become a sphere if it is curved
negatively
a saddle but if the universe doesn’t
curve at all
then it is completely flat which means
that
it is either like a pac-man screen where
we suddenly get transported to the other
side of the universe after stepping out
of one of its edges or a flat plane
extending infinitely out
but what determines the curvature of
this universe
how will we ever know one way is to
measure the average density of the
universe
this is because matter works space in
one way or another
the amount of matter and area will
determine whether our universe curves
by how much too much matter that space
will curve into a sphere
too little it will curve into a saddle
but at the point where we just have
enough matter
at about six hydrogen atoms per cubic
meter
all the curving forces will balance out
and space will be flat
the current data is areally close to the
critical density that is six hydrogen
atoms per
cubic meter with 27 percent
of this density observed by traditional
methods
and another 73 percent accounted for by
dark energy
however this is still not certain what
we can know for sure is that there is at
least
a possibility if not a big one
for the universe to be infinitely large
if so then we can almost call our
universe
a multiverse since the fastest
information can travel
is at the speed of light the farthest
region of space that is dependent on
each other
would be around 40 billion light years
away
outside of this circle of 40 billion
light years
there will be independent regions that
are evolving by itself
they will form a quilt-like shape across
the universe
extending infinitely each evolving by
itself
there will be an infinite number of such
universes
if this is so the universe
may really concur with our thought
experiment
so what’s the takeaway
to be honest i’m not really too sure
myself but i’ll be exceedingly
happy if you may sometimes
recall this talk and the possibility
that all
that we do all that we feel and all that
we experience
at this moment may have a greater
significance
that transcends our earth and our
universe
to just take note that our lives may not
be trivial
nor fleeting but eternal
louis armstrong once sang what a
wonderful
world and we may
be just as well justified in saying
what a wonderful universe