“Infinity”
We’ve incorporated that term into our everyday communications and exchanges so ubiquitously that it has, astonishingly, lost its luster, its wonder, its indescribable awe. Step back for a moment and consider the unimaginable depths that are being plumbed here: No borders. No boundaries. No limits. Infinity - how can that even be possible? The stupefying monumental-ness of the concept that there is no end to everything is almost too difficult to grasp. When we truly examine the notion of infinity, our immediate reaction isn’t “what?” or “how?” or even “why?” It’s “huh?”
And the extended implications are just as mind-boggling. According to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, space and time are effectively the same thing - a combined "spacetime." So, if the universe is infinite in terms of space, it is also infinite in terms of time. It is endless and eternal. And as a result, anything that can possibly happen - even the most highly unlikely of events - has not only happened, but has happened an infinite number of times. That would be true because if there is an infinite field to work with, and if an event took place once, the workings of forever and boundlessness would dictate that it would also happen a second time, and then a third, and so on.
That would mean that life has not only arisen and evolved on Earth once, it has done so repeatedly and on innumerable other worlds throughout the timelessly existing cosmos. As such, we would be far from alone in the universe; "we" would instead be legion.
And an infinite existence dispenses with the need for a multiverse to explain why the laws and constants of the universe seem so finely tuned to give rise to life. An "infinite universe" is effectively the same thing as the "multiverse," only it doesn’t need extra dimensions or branes or the like to work its magic. There aren't a limitless number of universes; there's just one, but it has limitless features.
It is, to say the very least, staggeringly difficult to put one's mental arms around such bizarre concepts, but from a scientific viewpoint the above conclusions are surely inescapable.
That is, of course, unless the universe isn’t truly infinite ...
Is it?
Subscribe to Exus The Podquest for the answer to that question, and an “infinite” number of others just like it!