We may be living in just one such bubble in a vast universe of similar bubbles in expansion. There are no interactions between the bubbles except in the form of this single bubble drifting in a huge cosmic sea.

The initial big bang may have continued to grow outside of galaxies, without the end. But instead, small ‘universes’ continuously branch off, forming an enormous mosaic of separate cosmic realms.

Light is the only thing that we have observed that has come to us since the Big Bang. Further out there is an unseen area, in which the conditions are similar to those that we experience.

When inflation is forever new universes will be created at a faster rate than they can be annihilated. This constant production means that there is never an end to alternate realities.

New observations of astronomical distances show that space is quite flat. If the universe is flat, it has no border; if it has no border, there is the possibility of the repetition of matter.

Using the best estimates of the properties of matter and energy, cosmologists believe that the universe could go on forever beyond the cosmic horizon present to us. There are an infinite number of ways in which particles can be arranged to form matter, and eventually such arrangements will duplicate exactly.

There are only a limited number of arrangements for particles in a fixed volume. If evenly spread out over an infinite number of space, the same configurations will occur again and again with certainty.

At present, we can only see out 46 billion light-years in any direction. Anything located beyond this sphere is mysterious, concealing cosmic duplicates.

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