dostick 5 days ago

Isn’t the answer infinity? We don’t know what’s beyond observed part of universe, and there’s infinity number of universes. If our emerged then there’s others.

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tialaramex 5 days ago

There is no reason to expect any particular number of universes. We've observed exactly one, this one, which had to exist or else we wouldn't be here to observe that it existed.

Our universe is finite, so although it is unbounded (lacks edges) there aren't an infinite number of anything in it, galaxies, stars, M&Ms, grains of sand, atoms of hydrogen all finite.

atq2119 5 days ago

Has that really been established? The observable universe is finite, yes, but I wouldn't think that automatically implied that the universe as a whole is.

pixl97 5 days ago

Simply put we can't know and we can never know if the universe is flat. Now, if the universe has a curvature then we could use that as a baseline for the size of the universe, but as of so far we've not detected one.

andyjohnson0 5 days ago

> and there’s infinity number of universes

There is no evidence that there are a infinite number of universes. All we know of is the one we exist in. The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posits that there are a very large number of non-interacting "worlds" which may or may not be the same as "universes".

And if you meant "infinity number of galaxies" then that would require an infinite-size universe, and we don't know if that is the case for our universe. It could be, or it could be finite but unbounded.

dostick 5 days ago

Yes we don’t know if other universes exist. So it’s 50/50 infinity or one. Then if our universe came into existence, then probability is not 50/50, because we know that something exists, therefore something else is more likely to exist, probability towards infinity.

If you were observer of emptiness and no universe or anything existing then you would say it’s more likely there will be nothing, so probability towards zero.

Not to forget the recursion. There’s likely universes within our elementary particles or our universe is a particle in parent one.

pfdietz 5 days ago

> There’s likely universes within our elementary particles or our universe is a particle in parent one.

This is a very nonstandard use of the word "likely".

12_throw_away 5 days ago

probability does not work that way

fc417fc802 2 days ago

Actually I think it might? If I describe an arbitrary hypothetical object to you is it more likely that it exists or doesn't exist? How does that compare to the case where I present you with a single example of an object and ask you to guess if others that are substantially similar to it exist?

You have so little information that any estimate is effectively arbitrary. Nonetheless I think there's a clear statistical bias between the two choices in both cases.