Infinite Selfs in Infinite Space

[Zoink]

Reading my last issue of Scientific American, they have an article on Parallel Universes, which kind of threw me for a loop with something I hadn't thought of. The author goes through the different "levels" of parallel universes, the first (type i):

-the size of the hot/cold spots in the cosmic background radiation indicate that the universe is flat and not round.

-this can mean that the universe is infinite in size, with an infinite amount of matter in this infinite space.

-so for the big bang, instead of a single point expanding like a balloon (spherical geometry), an infinite sized 'sheet' appears and begins expanding, with our own visible area still being essentially a point on this 'sheet' at the big bang.

-statistically, if you were to take the volume of space that we can see (our region of the universe) the information in that volume is finite, and statistically, in the infinity of space there must exist an infinity of other volumes with the exactly same information. So if you were to digitize our region (eg. 10101110100...) there are only so many combinations, and in an infinitely of space, combinations must repeat.

-Therefore by taking all the possible combinations, something like 10^10^23 meters away there should be a doppelganger of yourself on a doppelganger earth in a doppelganger galaxy (statistically speaking).

-further, this is the foundation for the anthropic principle that anything that is possible, no matter how unlikely, must occur somewhere in this infinite universe (eg. life).

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This is all just paraphrased. What do you guys make of this?

[zombie84]

this was something that i thought of years ago, but i wasnt sure how accurate the science was. The last i had heard of the shape-of-the-universe theories was that it was saddle-shaped.

[Rye]

Hmm...if there was infinite matter, wouldn't the gravity put it all on one point?

[Zoink]

Hmm...if there was infinite matter, wouldn't the gravity put it all on one point?

The universe is only 15 billion years old, so we only experience the gravity from our region of the universe, some 15 billion lightyears away (its actually a slightly higher number because space has expanded since that 15 billion year-old graviton reached us).

Eventually some distant point is reached where objects are expanding away at FTL speeds, meaning that part of the universe doesn't interact with us. If expansion increases (as some believe it is) then this FTL region will slowly encroach on our region of space. Its believed that at some point only our local group of galaxies will be visible, held together by their local gravity.

[Zoink]

this was something that i thought of years ago, but i wasnt sure how accurate the science was. The last i had heard of the shape-of-the-universe theories was that it was saddle-shaped.

According to the article, the readings of the hot/cold spots have ruled out any sort of curved spacetime with 99.something% certainty. The small chance it is not is based on our region having curved space, and by chance having a complex hot/cold spot structure that would fool the readings into thinking space is flat.

I might be able to find a net-link to the paper on the hot/cold spots (it might have been in the article). I'll post a link if I do.

[kojikun]

I'm not sure if Pauli Exclusion works outside electron clouds, but if it does then this idea breaks down.

If it doesnt, the universe is necessarilly infinite for the theory to work. But since you have an infinite place within which things can exist, and an infinite number of possible combinations, theres only one of you, since any number, including infinity, divided by itself equals one. So INF[possibilities]/INF[realities] = 1. I think.

But its pointless bother with, since they're an infinite distance from us!