# infinite regression **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 21, 2012, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infinite-regression/644712 "2012-12-21T05:47:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 28
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infinite-regression/644712/28 "2012-12-25T03:47:40Z")
As long as we’re talking about smoking pot and thinking about infinite regression, there’s a passage in _Cosmos_ (second to the last paragraph in Chapter X) by Carl Sagan where he says, “There is an idea - strange, haunting, evocative - one of the most exquisite conjectures in science or religion. It is entirely undemonstrated; it may never be proved. But it stirs the blood. There is, we are told, an infinite hierachy of universes, so that an elementary particle, such as an electron, in our universe would, if penetrated, reveal itself to be an entire closed universe. Within it, organized into the local equivalent of galaxies and smaller structures, are an immense number of other, much tinier elementary particles, which are themselves universes at the next level, and so on forever - an infinite downward regression, universes within universes, endlessly. And upward as well. Our familiar universe of galaxies and stars, planets and people, would be a single elementary particle in the next universe up, the first step of another infinite regress.” My thought after reading this was that this reminded me of something. It reminded me of the scene in the movie _Animal House_ where people are sitting around smoking pot and discussing this theory. I wondered if Sagan smoked a lot of pot. As it happens, he did: > **[Carl Sagan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan)** > > Carl Edward Sagan (/ˈseɪɡən/; SAY-gən; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, science communicator, author, and professor. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. He assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque a... Incidentally, the theory above is sometimes called the theory of subatomic universes, although this could get confused with the idea of subatomic particles. One famous short story where it’s used is “He Who Shrank” by Henry Hasse: > **[Henry Hasse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hasse)** > > Henry Louis Hasse (February 7, 1913 – May 20, 1977) was an American science fiction author and fan. He is probably known best for being the co-author of Ray Bradbury's first professionally published story, "Pendulum", which appeared in November 1941 in Super Science Stories. Hasse co-authored two more published stories with Bradbury: "Gabriel's Horn" (1943) and "Final Victim" (1946). > Hasse's novelette "He Who Shrank" is anthologized in both the classic 1946 collection Adventures in Time and Spa... The term isn’t used in that story, but it’s used, for instance, in this interview: [http://mavericksofthemind.com/clifford-pickover](http://mavericksofthemind.com/clifford-pickover) --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/infinite-regression/644712)._