An Infinite Ponder

Hey everyone. So instead of rambling on about the same topic for yet another day, I want to talk about something different - everything. There are times when my mind wanders into philosophical territory and weird stuff can happen.

So infinity is big. You most likely learned about it in math or throwing around insults in the school playground. Even though you thought Timmy's face was ugly times infinity times... infinity!, mathematics defines infinity as a concept that has nothing greater than it. So, infinity times infinity would still just be infinity.

Now for the other concept - the multiverse theory. This proposes that there are other universes out there (yeah, don't try pointing to "there" because you won't win) where things may be as similar or as different as our universe. A very common example people shout out at this point is a universe where Germany won World War II. This is a popular choice because it creates a dynamically alternate history for us to mull over and write books, movies, and games about. According to the multiverse theory, there is a universe where it happened. To expand upon things further, the multiverse theory also includes universes with different laws of physics/nature. So, a universe where Germany won the war could also be a universe where magnetism isn't a thing or liquids don't change their shape to fit their container.

We can easily get absurd with thinking of increasingly far fetched alternate universes, but go back to the multiverse theory explanation. An alternate universe can be exactly the same as ours except for one tiny change. It could be you jumping over a line in the sidewalk compared to just walking through (not caring about your mother's back). Or it could be you sneezing at 3:48:43.6pm or 3:48:43.7pm. Taking human interaction out, there is an alternate universe that's exactly like ours except today, the wind blew just a little differently and made a leaf land on a sidewalk a fraction of a centimeter north-northeast compared to here.

One way to interpret the multiverse theory is that whenever something can have more than one outcome, a multiverse is created such that *all* outcomes happen in at least one universe. The leaf from before could land a centimeter west or three centimeters to the south. The leaf could just spontaneously combust. Sure, it's statistically unlikely, but since it has a probability greater than zero, the multiverse theory says another universe must exist where this leaf just bursts into flames.

From this point, we can think about our universe and realize that every moment, alternate universes are being created left and right for every event that's happening. Even if my lights have been on all day here, there are universes where yet another light will burn out or a power outage or something else that changes that fact.

So to put this all together, there are an infinite number of universes that were identical to each other 24 hours ago that are all different now because of every possible event that could have happened. However, this group of universes are an infinitely tiny slice of all potential universes. It's the same logic as a number line in math - an infinite number of numbers exist between 1 and 2, but it's nowhere close to the number of numbers ever. Even if we only looked at the universes that were the same 24 hours ago, the fact that we are now in a universe with this exact combination of events and outcomes is a statistical impossibility.

Anyways, this is what I was thinking about while picking up chicken on Thursday, so that's a thing. There's obviously so more you can to dive into with mathematics, quantum mechanics, and philosophy, but yeah, that was how I kept myself entertained in the car by myself.

Tomorrow is Children's Awareness Memorial Day, National Cancer Survivors Day, and VCR Day.

DFTBA