Poll: Everything Exists.

[DracoSuave]

If the speed of light is c, and the age of the universe is t, then the furthest any object can be from any other object is ct. This is true for all points in the universe, thusly, the maximum area of the universe is 4(pi)ct/3 for all reference points.

Now, let's start with the concept of a single particle. The number of outcomes for its location -alone- are transfinite. It can occupy any position in said space, and any point halfway between any two selected points, ad infininitum. Thusly, for the universe to be able to contain every possibility, it would have to have a transfinite amount of matter in a finite space. This would result in total gravitational collapse.

As this is not happening, and is not observed, we can therefore conclude there is not a transfinite amount of matter, and as we know there is not a transfinite amount of matter, we can thus prove there is not a transfinite amount of possibility in the universe.

As there is not transfinite possiblity, there cannot be infinite possibility, and as there cannot be infinite possibility, 'everything exists' cannot be true.

 

[randomsix]

Space is infinite, therefore everything you can think of is out their somewhere.

It like the infinate amount of monkeys typing on an infinate amount of keyboards will at some point get you a complete library of all the books ever written.

Do you agree with this?

Were you at my physics talk last thursday?

OT: No, there are some things that cannot exist given infinite contiguous space given our current laws of physics. For example, a four sided Euclidean triangle cannot exist, along with other contradictory things.

But stuff other than that, such as all conceivable matter configurations, are not only possible but required.

Actually you only need one monkey and one typewriter...
Infinity of both would mean instant creation of the library, or creating it in the shortest amount of time that it can be typed.
However, I guess everything is 'possible'. In any case, even if everything is "possible", it doesn't mean everything exists. Also, the size of the universe is not known, and could actually be infinite, just sayin'.

Our universe has a particular size, or at least, is finite. It is possible that other "universes" (if our universe is simply a false-vacuum) exist, but ours would never intersect them. Ever.

Depending on your view on the end fate of the universe, however, the vacuum energy in our universe could eventually create a singularity, in the form of another Big Bang.

Metaphysics, meh.

The universe is (almost definitely) not infinite, just freaking huge.

According to the most widely accepted understanding of our universe (not the visible universe, but including what it is "expanding" into) both matter and space are infinite.

Something that's infinite can't expand. The universe has a theoretical size, and many credible theorists hold the belief that the universe could be finite and unbounded. For an example, the Earth itself is finite, but on the surface it is unbounded as everything is connected.

I was going to make arguments about how infinite matter meant infinite gravity, but realized that wouldn't make too much sense considering that a gravitational field travels at the speed of light.

Not true. Take the full hotel example: I have a hotel with an infinite amount of rooms, all full up, numbered 1,2,3...

If an infinite number of new people come and ask for rooms, I can give them to them. What I do is move every tennant at room #n to room #(2n). Now only the even rooms are full. So I give the infinite number of odd rooms to the new people. I have effectively "expanded" infinity, though it is still infinity.
The technical evidence:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0207/0207199v1.pdf
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v288/n5/pdf/scientificamerican0503-40.pdf
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v271/n5/pdf/scientificamerican1194-48.pdf


This one is more accessable:
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v288/n5/pdf/scientificamerican0503-40.pdf

They're TL;DR?
All evidence points towards space being flat. That's one of the things that comes out of what those guys who won the nobel prize in physics for a couple weeks ago.

Also:
Even if the gravitational field traveled at the speed of light, it falls off at r², and also at sufficiently large distances, the force from mass from one side would be the same as the force from mass from the other side.

 

[cdstephens]

Space is infinite, therefore everything you can think of is out their somewhere.

It like the infinate amount of monkeys typing on an infinate amount of keyboards will at some point get you a complete library of all the books ever written.

Do you agree with this?

Were you at my physics talk last thursday?

OT: No, there are some things that cannot exist given infinite contiguous space given our current laws of physics. For example, a four sided Euclidean triangle cannot exist, along with other contradictory things.

But stuff other than that, such as all conceivable matter configurations, are not only possible but required.

Actually you only need one monkey and one typewriter...
Infinity of both would mean instant creation of the library, or creating it in the shortest amount of time that it can be typed.
However, I guess everything is 'possible'. In any case, even if everything is "possible", it doesn't mean everything exists. Also, the size of the universe is not known, and could actually be infinite, just sayin'.

Our universe has a particular size, or at least, is finite. It is possible that other "universes" (if our universe is simply a false-vacuum) exist, but ours would never intersect them. Ever.

Depending on your view on the end fate of the universe, however, the vacuum energy in our universe could eventually create a singularity, in the form of another Big Bang.

Metaphysics, meh.

The universe is (almost definitely) not infinite, just freaking huge.

According to the most widely accepted understanding of our universe (not the visible universe, but including what it is "expanding" into) both matter and space are infinite.

Something that's infinite can't expand. The universe has a theoretical size, and many credible theorists hold the belief that the universe could be finite and unbounded. For an example, the Earth itself is finite, but on the surface it is unbounded as everything is connected.

I was going to make arguments about how infinite matter meant infinite gravity, but realized that wouldn't make too much sense considering that a gravitational field travels at the speed of light.

Not true. Take the full hotel example: I have a hotel with an infinite amount of rooms, all full up, numbered 1,2,3...

If an infinite number of new people come and ask for rooms, I can give them to them. What I do is move every tennant at room #n to room #(2n). Now only the even rooms are full. So I give the infinite number of odd rooms to the new people. I have effectively "expanded" infinity, though it is still infinity.
The technical evidence:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0207/0207199v1.pdf
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v288/n5/pdf/scientificamerican0503-40.pdf
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v271/n5/pdf/scientificamerican1194-48.pdf


This one is more accessable:
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v288/n5/pdf/scientificamerican0503-40.pdf

They're TL;DR?
All evidence points towards space being flat. That's one of the things that comes out of what those guys who won the nobel prize in physics for a couple weeks ago.

Also:
Even if the gravitational field traveled at the speed of light, it falls off at r², and also at sufficiently large distances, the force from mass from one side would be the same as the force from mass from the other side.

Oooo, I forgot about the hotel example, right. Personally, infinity is a hard concept for me to wrap around in physical terms.

Although space can be infinite though, I don't think matter is?

 

[randomsix]

Space is infinite, therefore everything you can think of is out their somewhere.

It like the infinate amount of monkeys typing on an infinate amount of keyboards will at some point get you a complete library of all the books ever written.

Do you agree with this?

Were you at my physics talk last thursday?

OT: No, there are some things that cannot exist given infinite contiguous space given our current laws of physics. For example, a four sided Euclidean triangle cannot exist, along with other contradictory things.

But stuff other than that, such as all conceivable matter configurations, are not only possible but required.

Actually you only need one monkey and one typewriter...
Infinity of both would mean instant creation of the library, or creating it in the shortest amount of time that it can be typed.
However, I guess everything is 'possible'. In any case, even if everything is "possible", it doesn't mean everything exists. Also, the size of the universe is not known, and could actually be infinite, just sayin'.

Our universe has a particular size, or at least, is finite. It is possible that other "universes" (if our universe is simply a false-vacuum) exist, but ours would never intersect them. Ever.

Depending on your view on the end fate of the universe, however, the vacuum energy in our universe could eventually create a singularity, in the form of another Big Bang.

Metaphysics, meh.

The universe is (almost definitely) not infinite, just freaking huge.

According to the most widely accepted understanding of our universe (not the visible universe, but including what it is "expanding" into) both matter and space are infinite.

Something that's infinite can't expand. The universe has a theoretical size, and many credible theorists hold the belief that the universe could be finite and unbounded. For an example, the Earth itself is finite, but on the surface it is unbounded as everything is connected.

I was going to make arguments about how infinite matter meant infinite gravity, but realized that wouldn't make too much sense considering that a gravitational field travels at the speed of light.

Not true. Take the full hotel example: I have a hotel with an infinite amount of rooms, all full up, numbered 1,2,3...

If an infinite number of new people come and ask for rooms, I can give them to them. What I do is move every tennant at room #n to room #(2n). Now only the even rooms are full. So I give the infinite number of odd rooms to the new people. I have effectively "expanded" infinity, though it is still infinity.
The technical evidence:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0207/0207199v1.pdf
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v288/n5/pdf/scientificamerican0503-40.pdf
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v271/n5/pdf/scientificamerican1194-48.pdf


This one is more accessable:
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v288/n5/pdf/scientificamerican0503-40.pdf

They're TL;DR?
All evidence points towards space being flat. That's one of the things that comes out of what those guys who won the nobel prize in physics for a couple weeks ago.

Also:
Even if the gravitational field traveled at the speed of light, it falls off at r², and also at sufficiently large distances, the force from mass from one side would be the same as the force from mass from the other side.

Oooo, I forgot about the hotel example, right. Personally, infinity is a hard concept for me to wrap around in physical terms.

Although space can be infinite though, I don't think matter is?

Try the bottom nature.com article.
The first couple pages basically explain OP's concept. The author calls it the Level I Multiverse.

 

[McMullen]

Is it possible that our universe is one of infinite possible universes and that the true cosmos consists of a possibility space where everything exists somewhere simply because it can? Sure, I think so. At the very least I can't rule it out.

 

[Trivea]

Are we a subscriber to the "infinite worlds" theory? Because it sounds like that - anything that you can possibly imagine is taking place in a world somewhere, and everything anyone in that world can possibly imagine is taking place in a different world, and blah blah blah forever.

I've heard it put forward that there is no such thing as imagination, only "imaging", i.e. you can't imagine something if it doesn't exist and therefore everything you can imagine must exist somewhere. It's an interesting theory, at least.

 

[oktalist]

If the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct (which seems likely) then everything that is physically possible has actually happened/will happen/is happening (past/future/present tense makes no sense here). If a particle happened to spin in a slightly different way a few nanoseconds after the big bang, then the laws of physics would've turned out very differently, and maybe we'd be living in 2-dimensional space and be made out of pixels instead of atoms, collecting coins and eating mushrooms to get big.

In addition, only those universes which are capable of supporting life will ever be perceived. And of those, a randomly chosen lifeform is more likely to be born into one of the more probable universes* which is capable of supporting a greater number of lifeforms.

* A universe's probability can be said to be the number of routes through the infinitely bifurcating quantum decision tree which arrive at that universe, divided by the total number of routes in the tree.

"The multiverse exists so that everything that could ever happen has somewhere to happen in." -some Discworld novel

Conversation with Discworld supercomputer:
Q: Why?
A: Because.
Q: Why anything?
A: Because everything.

 

[oktalist]

Regardless of whether Space is infinite and everything exists in space, there are still multiple dimensions that each had different paths and outcomes and what not: So yes, everything is possible.

Not necessarily. The Many Worlds Theory is an interpretation of quantum mechanics but it isn't necessarily true, mainly because we can't go into these other universes and prove that they exist.

If several interpretations all predict the same experimental results, then as far as we are concerned they are all equally correct. Why assume that only one of them can be correct?

 

[SinisterGehe]

If it breaks the laws of physics, it can not be. By this I do not refer the laws that we the Humans have defined, but to the laws that exist and control the universe and that we have only partially figured out and understood. When one law is broken another will take it's place and control it. Everything follows the laws of physics, the common ones that we know and those that we haven't figured.

But if there is infinite amount of universe, infinite space and infinite energy. Any combination can create almost everything, but things that break the laws of reality and physics.