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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6735701" data-attributes="member: 82106">No, you're talking about a 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics. I'm talking about the sheer brute physical size of the single Universe we inhabit. If our ideas of its scale are correct, then it is SO VAST that almost every conceivable configuration of matter which could possibly exist under the laws of physics must be actualized somewhere. Its NOT an infinite number however. There is some huge percentage of the Universe that is outside our light cone and thus causally disconnected from us (we cannot even in principle know what exactly is happening there, and as long as the Universe continues to exist no information will ever be exchanged with those locations). 10^120th power is a truly unimaginably vast number BTW. I'm not sure exactly where that number was derived from, like many such numbers it is probably some guesstimate or other, so I wouldn't put too much emphasis on it, except in the sense of being 'really really huge'. I seem to recall a Sci-Am that had some authors discussing different sorts of 'Multiverse'. The terminology considered this the simplest form, physically disconnected areas of a single space-time, though you could quibble that it isn't really 'outside our Universe' in some sense. Level 2 in that scheme is IIRC your 'many worlds' or other similar concepts, then we have string theory concepts of the 'bulk', and finally one could imagine 'Universes' where the rules of logic we think by simply don't apply or apply differently, which would be well beyond string-theoretical concepts of differing fundamental constants.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6735701, member: 82106"] No, you're talking about a 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics. I'm talking about the sheer brute physical size of the single Universe we inhabit. If our ideas of its scale are correct, then it is SO VAST that almost every conceivable configuration of matter which could possibly exist under the laws of physics must be actualized somewhere. Its NOT an infinite number however. There is some huge percentage of the Universe that is outside our light cone and thus causally disconnected from us (we cannot even in principle know what exactly is happening there, and as long as the Universe continues to exist no information will ever be exchanged with those locations). 10^120th power is a truly unimaginably vast number BTW. I'm not sure exactly where that number was derived from, like many such numbers it is probably some guesstimate or other, so I wouldn't put too much emphasis on it, except in the sense of being 'really really huge'. I seem to recall a Sci-Am that had some authors discussing different sorts of 'Multiverse'. The terminology considered this the simplest form, physically disconnected areas of a single space-time, though you could quibble that it isn't really 'outside our Universe' in some sense. Level 2 in that scheme is IIRC your 'many worlds' or other similar concepts, then we have string theory concepts of the 'bulk', and finally one could imagine 'Universes' where the rules of logic we think by simply don't apply or apply differently, which would be well beyond string-theoretical concepts of differing fundamental constants. [/QUOTE]

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