An Introduction To Infinity

Look! The blog has had a makeover! Hope you like it.


I'm going to talk about the concept of infinity, something I find mind-boggling but fascinating. If the universe is infinite, there are infinite possibilities. There is another version of you reading this blog right now, doing exactly the same thing. One of you is the king of the World and one of you is a tramp.


Imagine a universe where there are only 2 possible kinds of atom, green and red. These atoms can only bind together in a particular way to form molecules consisting of 4 atoms. Therefore, our model only contains a certain number of possible combinations.


If we take our model and add just one more molecule, we get a duplicate of one that already exists in a finite universe. This is true which ever way the atoms are arranged.


In an infinite universe there is an infinite number of atoms. Thus, an infinite number of molecules and combinations and therefore an infinite number of duplicates.


Expand our simple model to contain all the atoms, all the laws of physics and all the possible combinations in our universe. Now we can begin to visualise an infinite universe... the possibilities are endless.


However, our universe probably isn't infinite and it only contains a limited amount of mass. But, it is destined to continue to expand indefinitely, eventually becoming a cold, dead wasteland.


But... This begs the question:


If our universe isn't infinite, does it have an edge? And if so, what's beyond it?