What if Kerbin exists?

[VincentMcConnell]

Wouldn\'t it be weird if -- coincidentally, of course -- Kerbin really existed and was populated by little Kerbals who flew spacecraft to the Mun and every time the devs make something the game, those Kerbals just happen to actually discover or accomplish it?

My scientific hypothesis is that Kerbin exists. You cannot prove me wrong haha

[ColdFire75]

Assuming an infinite universe, it already does

[VincentMcConnell]

How is this off-topic? It\'s about KSP... GD is 'anything and everything Kerbal Space Program'.

[Imandreas]

I am pretty sure the Kerbals fund their space program more then NASA.

[Anomalous_Matter]

Yes - So long as space goes on infinitely, there is a 100% chance that somewhere in the universe there is a race of space-obsessed, short, round and green people with two moons named Mun and Minmus and a star named Kerbol, who discover things at the exact same time the devs release them.

Oh, and by this logic there\'s also a second solar system exactly like ours IRL, with the exact same people, history, planets, languages, who do things at the exact same time we do. Which means somewhere another Jeb_Kerman is realizing this as well while watching TV and posting this reply.

[Imandreas]

Wait a minute! If Kerbin is of equal size, no element would be dense enough for Earth\'s gravity! Therefore, Kerbin could not exist.

[DYJ]

Unless you are asking 'What if Kerbin existed in the KSP universe' this is very much Off-topic.

[VincentMcConnell]

Yes - So long as space goes on infinitely, there is a 100% chance that somewhere in the universe there is a race of space-obsessed, short, round and green people with two moons named Mun and Minmus and a star named Kerbol, who discover things at the exact same time the devs release them.

Oh, and by this logic there\'s also a second solar system exactly like ours IRL, with the exact same people, history, planets, languages, who do things at the exact same time we do. Which means somewhere another Jeb_Kerman is realizing this as well while watching TV and posting this reply.

I don\'t believe that. Just because it goes on for infinity, doesn\'t mean that somewhere EVERYTHING is the EXACT same.

[RedDwarfIV]

I don\'t believe that. Just because it goes on for infinity, doesn\'t mean that somewhere EVERYTHING is the EXACT same.

He may be confusing infinite universe [and its not infinite, because it\'s exapanding (faster than light, admittedly,)] with alternate dimension theory.

[Cooly568]

I think there could be a IRL kerbin. Based on the Multiverse theory.

[Spearka]

Assuming an infinite universe, it already does

i don\'t believe in an infinite universe, but i believe in ininite universes

[Cooly568]

i don\'t believe in an infinite universe, but i believe in ininite universes

you mean finite?

[ping111]

Only in an alternate universe. The elements and their gravities just wouldn\'t work in this one. Maybe if in another, where everything was 200x more dense, though no-one would be alive to see the Kerbals. Also, I think we agreed that Kerbol is impossible because it\'s a procedural red dwarf or something (whatever that means), so I remember hearing that it couldn\'t harbour life on Kerbin. Whoop my ass to your heart\'s content if I\'m wrong.

[LukeTim]

Yes - So long as space goes on infinitely, there is a 100% chance that somewhere in the universe there is a race of space-obsessed, short, round and green people with two moons named Mun and Minmus and a star named Kerbol, who discover things at the exact same time the devs release them.

Oh, and by this logic there\'s also a second solar system exactly like ours IRL, with the exact same people, history, planets, languages, who do things at the exact same time we do. Which means somewhere another Jeb_Kerman is realizing this as well while watching TV and posting this reply.

There\'s not just a second... There\'s an infinite number of Solar Systems identical to our own. An infinite number of Solar Systems which are identical but for one tiny little detail that nobody would notice, an infinite number which are quite different, an infinite number which are completely different.

Literally, every possible permutation of matter exists an infinite number of times over in a universe with infinite size and infinite matter/energy. Just by the very definition of the term infinite we can assert that this must be true.

[bandit4910]

Only in an alternate universe. The elements and their gravities just wouldn\'t work in this one. Maybe if in another, where everything was 200x more dense, though no-one would be alive to see the Kerbals. Also, I think we agreed that Kerbol is impossible because it\'s a procedural red dwarf or something (whatever that means), so I remember hearing that it couldn\'t harbour life on Kerbin. Whoop my ass to your heart\'s content if I\'m wrong.

Actually, many red dwarfs have planets that are expected to hold life. We don\'t know how far kerbin actually is from kerbol, therefore we don\'t know if kerbin could hold life or not.

[VincentMcConnell]

How do we know all of this?

[LukeTim]

Actually, many red dwarfs have planets that are expected to hold life. We don\'t know how far kerbin actually is from kerbol, therefore we don\'t know if kerbin could hold life or not.

We do. Isn\'t it something like 14,000,000km?

[Endeavour]

Actually, many red dwarfs have planets that are expected to hold life. We don\'t know how far kerbin actually is from kerbol, therefore we don\'t know if kerbin could hold life or not.

Also, we don\'t know what the Kerbals need to live. They may not be the same form of life as life on Earth

[CaptainArbitrary]

Yes - So long as space goes on infinitely, there is a 100% chance

No. There are infinite integers, but none of them is a grapefruit.

[Endeavour]

No. There are infinite integers, but none of them is a grapefruit.

Isn\'t that only because of how an integer is defined? I don\'t know if we have defined the universe (multiverse?) in the same way we have defined integers.

[rdfox]

OK, let\'s simplify this.

Kerbin, as we know it, can\'t exist in our universe because there\'s nothing dense enough to have the mass and diameter specified, except for neutron star material and a supernova remnant that\'s undergone gravitational collapse and become a singularity, both of which are *too* dense. (Of course, there\'s my theory that Kerbin is actually a Dyson sphere around a neutron star that has accreted so much material on its outside over time, it\'s spawned life, but that\'s really just a joke.)

Regardless of whether or not our universe is infinite in size (and the current consensus is that it is), that\'s a fundamental issue that you can\'t get around. So the laws of physics say that Kerbin doesn\'t exist in our universe.

HOWEVER, if the 'many worlds' theory of quantum mechanics is correct--and the latest developments in cosmology, particularly involving membrane theory, indicate that it probably IS--then there are also an infinite number of universes out there, none of which have to have any physical laws in accordance with our own. What\'s more, every time that a particle at the quantum mechanical level has multiple possible things that can happen in a given length of time, all of them do happen, with each one splitting off its own alternate universe. That might not seem like a lot, but let\'s look at it this way.

Imagine a universe consisting of one photon. Nothing else exists in this entire universe, just this photon and pure vacuum. What\'s more, it\'s a one-dimensional universe, so that electron can only move in two directions; furthermore, there is some force that *forces* the photon to constantly move, so it never has the option of remaining in the same place. (For simplicity, assume this universe has the same speed of light in a vacuum as our universe.)

Now, every measurable unit of time--every time the photon can be observed by the system as a whole--the photon can go left, or it can go right. The 'many worlds' theory says that it does *both*, going left *and* right, with the left-moving version being in one universe, and the right-moving version being in another one, identical in every way except that this time, the photon went the other way. The smallest measurable unit of time, Planck time, is hard to explain the details of (Wikipedia lost me on that one), but it\'s equal to about 5.391*10^-44 seconds. This means that the number of universes we have from that one photon *doubles* 1.855*10^43 times every second. Anyone who\'s ever looked at the powers of two knows how quickly it expands; I don\'t have any calculator that can give me even a scientific-notation answer for that--indicating that *every second*, this hypothetical universe would split off more universes than the total number of particles in the observable universe.

Next, imagine a similar universe, but with TWO photons in it. This time, every Planck time, there are FOUR possible configurations that can result. By doubling the number of particles in the universe, you square the number of possible results. Again, all four configurations happen, resulting in *four* universes.

Now consider how many particles there are in the universe, how many different directions they could move--including not moving--at every observable time, how long the universe has existed, and the number of possible configurations that could result every Planck time. While technically not infinite, the number of parallel universes that our universe would be splitting off every second is literally inconceivable. At the physical level, there would be a huge percentage that are indistinguishable from our universe (and one could argue that those end up being the same universe, explaining how we\'ve discovered quantum mechanical effects with observations in just this one universe and greatly reducing the headache of distinguishing them), but there would be far more that are different in some way at the physical level--and that\'s an infinite range of differences there, too; it could be as simple a difference as my the dead pixel on my laptop\'s screen being a couple pixels to the left of where it is in this universe, or it could be as big as a universe where Harv is Captain Kerbin, the greatest superhero of the Kerbal race.

The implication of the 'many worlds' theory is that not only can fictional universes exist, but indeed that every fictional universe ever imagined really does exist out there.

Kind of a sobering thought, isn\'t it?

[Kryten]

So long as space goes on infinitely...

Well, it doesn\'t.

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[CaptainArbitrary]

Well, it doesn\'t.

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It appears to do just that. Surveys of the cosmic microwave background reveal that on the large scale (factoring out insignificant blips like superclusters of galaxies) the curvature of space is exactly zero. That means the universe has infinite three-volume.

[Cooly568]

Even if gravity can\'t overcome the initial expanding power given by the big bang, the universe will keep on expanding and eventually run out of material to create things with because the space is so vast, so the universe would go into a deep freeze but still be infinite. If gravity and the expanding force slow each other down then the universe will reach a finite size. If gravity overcomes the expanding power then everything will be sucked back in to the center of the universe into a black hole and we will be back where the universe started.

This is my opinion on a infinite universe.

[nibula]

Universe is not infinite place where universe are is infinite