This Is Why The Multiverse Must Exist

Look out at the Universe all you want, with arbitrarily powerful technology, and you’ll never find an edge. Space goes on as far as we can see, and everywhere we look we see the same things: matter and radiation. In all directions, we find the same telltale signs of an expanding Universe: the leftover radiation from a hot, dense state; galaxies that evolve in size, mass, and number; elements that change abundances as stars live and die.

But what lies beyond our observable Universe? Is there an abyss of nothingness beyond the light signals that could possibly reach us since the Big Bang? Is there just more Universe like our own, out there past our observational limits? Or is there a Multiverse, mysterious in nature and forever unable to be seen?

The Multiverse is an extremely controversial idea, but at its core it’s a very simple concept. Just as the Earth doesn’t occupy a special position in the Universe, nor does the Sun, the Milky Way, or any other location, the Multiverse goes a step farther and claims that there’s nothing special about the entire visible Universe.

The Multiverse is the idea that our Universe, and all that’s contained within it, is just one small part of a larger structure. This larger entity encapsulates our observable Universe as a small part of a larger Universe that extends beyond the limits of our observations. That entire structure — the unobservable Universe — may itself be part of a larger spacetime that includes many other, disconnected Universes, which may or may not be similar to the Universe we inhabit.

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