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