To infinity and Beyoncé

Just to make it absolutely clear before we start, I am not a scientist, or a mathematician, in fact I am about as far away from either as is humanly possible, just ask Mr Faben-Ward, my touchy-feely days-of-yore maths tutor who was known to exclaim ‘It’s not rocket science Richard, it’s the nine times table!’ Thereby confirming my admission and lack of qualifications in a single statement. This does not mean that I have no interest in numbers or discussing them, I have a reluctant interest in money and that’s numbers, rather small ones in my case, but numbers all the same. I can’t help wishing that money was letters though, I think I would be far more successful in bending it to my will, at anticipating it, I might not be able to smell the money but I sure could spell it. Money. See? Digression, apologies. Not a scientist or a mathematician then, yet it doesn’t take either to point out how many times Einstein or Hawking have been wrong (it helps being able to call everything a theory), mistakes are inevitable when making wider assumptions based on one’s own expertise because expertise even in your own field is often limited, relatively speaking. Neurosurgeons know very little about the human brain, astrophysicists know even less about the universe and Ronald McDonald knows absolutely nothing about hamburgers. Of course they know an awful lot more than I ever will (maybe not Ronald) and the pursuit of new ideas outside of one’s own walled garden is often critical to human advancement, unless it’s a filet-O-shrimp burger. It is a shame then that all too often great minds don’t think alike and descend into the quagmire of obstinacy, partisanship and vanity, wasting their valuable time bickering about definitive answers to impossible questions. Is space infinite? For example.

There are some things I am an expert at, like the contents of my Volvo’s glovebox or rubbing Libby’s feet and I am really good at guessing what I am going to say next. I have educated opinions about all of these things (orange, I was going to say orange) and see no reason why, in the case of the infinite I should not offer my own unique perspective, after all the universe is a lot like the contents of my Volvo’s glovebox. Depending on who you ask of course. Einstein believed that there was just the glovebox whereas Hawking seems to believe that at the very least the glovebox is in a car, I like to think about where the car is parked because if its parking space is indeed infinite then that gives me every right to profess an opinion about it because by definition, where the infinite is concerned, my opinion is as informed as anyone else’s. There is no such thing as an expert on the infinite and though everything I say can rightly be treated with derision by those who know better, the truth is they don’t, know better, they only think they do. Confronted with the infinite all knowledge is irrelevant, I can with complete authority declare any and every opinion equally valid, including mine. Is it any wonder then that so many scientists and mathematicians hate the infinite? Hate the very idea of it. They want a small (though still massive) universe, something that can be contained, quantified, have a number applied to it. To them the universe can only exist if it can be measured, in increasingly esoteric ways using arcane systems they have invented, the origins of which were once (ironically) credited to the divine. Unfortunately in the face of the infinite everything falls apart, time, distance, logic all disappear down space’s theoretical blackrabbithole. Can time exist if there is no beginning and no end? Can space be curved when infinity demands it be flat? Can any reasonable assumptions be made about something that can never be investigated? Can calculation be applied to something that defies maths?

On this Earth no two packs of shuffled playing cards have ever been in the same order, ever. Even if the entire population of the planet had been shuffling non-stop since the invention of cards and kept shuffling until the sun exploded there would still never be two packs in the same order. However in an infinite universe there would be an infinite number of shuffled packs in the same order, as well as an infinite number of packs in every other possible combination and if you picked any one card at random there would be as many of that card as the total number of all other cards combined. No matter how unlikely something was it would happen just as frequently as something very likely. An infinite number of you would be married to Beyoncé, an infinite number of you would never even meet her, you would win the lottery an infinite number of times but you would also lose an infinite number of times, even though there is no such thing as an infinite number and by the way, infinity plus one is still infinity (sorry kids). Infinity eats numbers for breakfast, a million seconds is just over eleven and a half days, a billion seconds is just over thirty one and a half years and a trillion seconds is an incredible thirty one and a half thousand years. Yet in an infinite universe a trillion is a tiny number, in fact all numbers are tiny, one has the same value as one billion or one trillion or one billion trillion and anything with a finite value divided by the infinite is as close to zero as can be measured. So if humans are finite in an infinite universe statistically there isn’t anyone alive to marry Beyoncé or win the lottery and yet here we all are, thinking infinity into being and by doing so creating a paradox which demands we cease to exist while at the same time pretty much guaranteeing we all win the lottery. Somewhere.

To recap, in an infinite universe there is an infinite number of everything. All at once. If you think this sounds bonkers you are right, but you are also wrong. The infinite can never be anything more than a matter of opinion but having said that the universe is a very elegant place and the infinite theory of infinity isn’t. A tattooed man has just entered the shop wearing a tweed suit, a waxed moustache and a brown bowler with a golden feather, he is sipping coffee though the plastic lid of a black corrugated cardboard cup, tapping one of his wing-tips and photographing product labels printed in splendid 66 with an Android phone to Google at home later in order to find them cheaper online while I surreptitiously frown at him quietly whistle ‘just blew in from a windy city’ and imagine him being eaten alive by his fake Gucci man bag. This is a moment so complicated with so many possible paths to it and from it that it could never happen in a contained universe, this is the kind of thing that requires the infinite in order for it to happen just once. In order for it to happen more than once it would have to happen an infinite number of times, which would require corroboration, because consciousness is the only reality. You would need infinite people able to study infinite Earths, at the same time, infinite distances apart, in their entirety, down to the sub-atomic level. As this can never happen for lots of fairly obvious reasons, it becomes pure conjecture and will always remain so. The infinite can never be studied or proved, of course it can never be disproved either. Which is interesting as it allows for the infinite to exist and not exist simultaneously, I am both singular, infinite and repeating myself and given that with enough monkeys and enough typewriters you will get Shakespeare just imagine what an extraordinary writer one of me must be. Not this one obviously.