The majority of astronomers believe that the universe will always be expanding. Given only the known universe, what would they expect to happen in ten raised to the quadrillion power years and far beyond that?
Let us begin with our current frame of reference. The universe keeps expanding. Most of the universe is empty space. However, none of that empty space is really empty at all; it is a sea of virtual particles. This is a well proven fact of quantum mechanics. After a very long time, even the most stable of particles in our present universe may decay to such an extent that they become indistinguishable from the virtual particles of empty space. However, given enough time, as time and space are measured from our current frame of reference, the sea of virtual particles will eventually expand to such an enormous volume that new universes will result from quantum-mechanical vacuum fluctuations. Since the expansion of the sea of virtual particles is unlimited, then so is the number of universes unlimited. In a minuscule fraction of those universes, every person in this universe would become duplicated by chance events. With the number of universes being unlimited, the number of chance duplications of any person is also unlimited.
Keep these six things in mind when deciding on an answer to the poll.
1. This poll is not about the truth or falsity of materialism. It is simply about a logical implication of materialism.
2. No assumption is made about the truth or falsity of the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI). MWI is just one of several alternative interpretations that agree with observations about quantum mechanical phenomena. The only theories of quantum mechanics considered here are those that are regarded as neither controversial nor speculative by the mainstream scientific community.
3. No assumption is made here concerning the present existence of anything beyond our known universe.
4. In materialism, a person is fully defined by physical characteristics. Any materialist definition of personal identity would consist of certain variables that are restricted to a very narrow range and other variables that would be permitted a wide range of variation. No sudden borderline threshold of personal identity is assumed. A materialist definition of personal identity could permit some overlap between personal identities.
5. Infinite existence of a person does not necessarily mean continuous immortality. A life could be infinite by means of an infinite number of versions of a person with finite life spans. Concerning continuity of consciousness, consider that a day of continuous consciousness is broken by a night of sleep. However, an unlimited number of universes would allow for cases of unlimited continuous life span for every person. As the life span gets longer, the number of version of a person living that long become more and more rare, but never become zero. Given an unlimited number of universes, there will always be enough universes for any given number of versions of a given person to have a length of life that exceeds any given amount.
6. By infinite, I am not referring to a specific number called infinity; I am referring to an unlimited quantity.