what does it mean for the universe to be infinite?
In: Planetary Science
What does it “mean”? Everything in the universal context because it probably affects how the universe evolves over time (and how it eventually ends). In the human context, other than knowledge, the “meaning” is probably zero.
The earth will very likely be baked by the sun and become incapable of supporting life in a billion years or two (which is “nothing” in terms of any conceivable lifetime of the universe). If we progress to the point of being able to support humanity on other planets or colonies, then perhaps we’ll colonize/terraform and continue to survive as a species around this solar system. With enough time, perhaps we develop the technology to construct generational space travel that may allow us to colonize the nearby star systems. All of these are “temporary” in the sense that no star lives forever – so we will eventually have to learn how to spread out more.
Even given these assumptions, it is unlikely that our species ever leaves this galaxy (or this plus Andromeda which will likely merge with the Milky Way). With the most super optimistic projections, humans (or whatever we evolve to) might explore nearby galaxies in our local cluster. But that appears to be it. No matter how “finite” or “infinite” our universe is, most of it will forever (ie until the universe dies) be beyond humanity.
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