In this thread It was said there are 10^75 atoms in the universe. I have heard that since the amount of energy and matter in the universe is limited there is a finite number of universes and that one theory is that all the universes are static and we just move from one to the other. If this is true how many universes are there? Is that even possible to calculate since we don’t seem to know the smallest possible amount of space or time that exists? Strings (if they exist) are millions of times smaller than atoms so the number would be insanely large. Is it even possible to calculate something like this (the number of static universes where the smallest particle changes the smallest possible amount from one to the next)?
Also, that 10^75 atoms would involve the same atoms in the same places, if you put one atom in another atom’s place in a different universe you’d open up endless new static universes if you were going by minor differences like two or three atoms changing place but having a universe that is identical aside from that.
If you’re talking about possible parallel universes - each one representing different possible outcomes of every possible individual event over all time… I’d say at a wild estimate the number would be approximately…
10[sup]a staggeringly big number ^ (another gigantic number ^ (hugeariffic) )[/sup]
Well considering that alternate universes are the stuff of science fiction and not science fact, I don’t think you can know for sure “how many” there are. However, considering that the amount of atoms in the universe is finite, then it follows that the number of permutations will be finite.
I suppose it would be possible to calculate the number of possible permutations if you knew the exact number of atoms (strings, whatever) in the universe. Get to counting.
the universe - everything we can see
the Universe - the entire universe all the way to the edge
the Universe - all that there is
The third one includes the various physics theories that there are parallel universes (proofs of which lie in the double slit experiment and the existence of quantum computers). Should this theory be true, then there are billions of universes.
There’s no upper limit. The number of universes would not be restricted by the number of atoms in this particular universe. The double slit experiment (if we are understanding it correctly) shows that atoms from other universes sometimes collide with atoms from our universe but sometimes they don’t.
There is a theory that every possible arrangement of matter/energy exists in one static universe or another and that we just travel from one of these static universes to the next sort of like how a film is just moving from one static piece of video to another, but it gives the illusion of motion. Since the amount of matter/energy in a universe is limited how many potential static universes would there be?
Even if its not true is there a way to figure out the number of potential static universes?
I’ve read and been told that perhaps one ought not to take the interpretative models of quantum mechanics too seriously. The numbers work out the same no matter which interpretation you prefer, and none is any less weird than the other. Many Worlds is nifty, but whether or not it’s “real” is more a philosophical call than anything, if I read correctly. IMO, that means it’s essentially meaningless except as a pedagogical crutch to help us manage the unmanageable, which is to make intuitive sense of quantum phenomena. Our brains just aren’t wired that way, apparently, so we come up with weird models like Many Worlds, as if that made matters any easier. Until someone can come up with a quantifiable reason to favor Many Worlds over, say, Sum-Over-Histories, or the venerable Copenhagen Interpretation, it would appear questions like “how many are the Many Wolrds” lack any objective meaning.
Given that Brass and Hark established that there are 196,833 dimensions to the quantum foam, the number of possible alternate universes in the Multiverse cannot be less than 196,833! or 196,833 factoral. I tried to calculate the number, but my laptop melted.
If “every possible arrangement of matter/energy” counts as its own individual “universe”, then obviously there are infinitely many “universes”, even if you consider only two particles.
I think you may be thinking of “state space”, the collection of all possible configurations of matter/energy. You shouldn’t think of this as a “space”, like outer space. Rather, it is a mathematical representation of all the possible configurations of your system. If your system is the whole universe (in the normal sense of everything we could travel to if we had the technology and time), then “state space” is very big indeed. In classical physics it is a continuous space of dimension 6^(number of particles in the universe) and contains an infinite number of points. In quantum physics it is a discrete space, but still has an infinite number of points.
You sure it’s not 196,883? I ask because the monster group was derived from the study of rotations in 196,883-d space, and those numbers are awfully similar.
Well, that sort of depends. You can definitely pack a continuum of circles into a 2-sphere, but there is no fibration of a 2-sphere by circles so you can’t do it with only circles.
Now, the other problem is that it’s axiomatic whether or not the cardinality of the continuum is Aleph[sub]1[/sub]. In one topos it is, in one it isn’t. All I can tell you for sure is it’s a continuum.