Not you, but another you.
This was in Scientific America recently, and it sounds like a version of a version of a version.
Well
Here is how it is supposed to go.
If the universe is in fact spatially infinite, then all possible "realities" exist. What you have to understand is the concept of "universe" is not what we can ever see. Inflation would forever remove parts of the whole thing from being seen. Parts of it are not linked to us in any way. Lets call everything (and I really mean everything) the multiverse. There may be 4 levels to this hierarchy, but for simplicity lets stick with easiest and lowest one.
Now we are causally connected to an area which appears to be a sphere about 15 billion light years across. Now remember that that isn't the end of "everything" but is the limit of what we observe. Now we have a fundamental size to work with. Every 15 billion light year, there is a space containing, what? Well, we don't know, but for our example, lets assume it is packed full. Every space in that new universe contains a fundamental particle. Protons, neutrons and the like. Well if you go out another 15 BLYs, then you could have the same except now you have one less particle. Then the next could have another fewer. There are finite ways these particles can be distributed. A huge number, but finite. You might get an empty universe, or a full or something in between.
Think of a volume of space that could hold at most 10x10x10 of legos. You have a thousand pieces in that cube space. In that 10x10x10 volume, you could have no blocks, one, or a thousand, and a large number of permutations. What you cannot have is less than zero legos, or more than 1000 in that volume. So lets take a truckload of legos and start building! You first take a piece of chalk and draw a 10x10 lego area on the ground. Put nothing in it. That is the minimum numbers of legos. Now draw another directly adjacent. Put one lego. Now another, and so on. Sooner or later you have a space with 1000 legos. Now remove one. Replace it, and remove another, when you have done all the possible permutations, remove 2 and do the same. Do three. Eventually you will come back to null space, or no legos, any you have exhausted all possible spatial possibilities for that space. Now here is the thing. You now take some random number of legos, and arrange them in some random way confined by that 10x10x10 space. Have you done that before? Yes you have! You did it systematically, but you did it. In fact it is IMPOSSIBLE to create a new configuration. Your lego "universe" has just repeated itself. It had to. You also made some almost like it, but just a little different. You had to. Now back to the "real" universe. Going out far enough, you HAVE to repeat this universe. You also have to have one where you were king, or lost a job or were never born. Remember, the key is that the Multiverse, that is all of reality, whether connected or not is INFINITE. Who cares how far one would have to measure? There is infinitely more. Of course there are more levels which may contain different physical laws, and such, but that is an unnecessary complication to this explanation
Facebook
Twitter