WHAT IS THE UNIVERSE
|U⟩ = ∑ αₙ|n⟩
We know what the universe contains. Two trillion galaxies. Each with hundreds of billions of stars. Around many: planets. On at least one: the kind of matter that grew curious about itself.
But that is not the same as knowing what the universe is.
· · ·Everything you have ever touched is made of the 5% of the universe that is ordinary matter. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy. Not dark as in sinister. Dark as in: we have no idea what it is.
The universe is not a place. It is an event that never stopped happening.
At the smallest scales, particles do not have definite positions until someone looks. They exist as probability clouds, collapsing into reality only upon observation.
At some level — the universe requires observers to be definite. Without something to collapse the wavefunction, reality stays smeared across all its possibilities.
· · ·So: what is the universe?
It is the only way nothing could become curious about itself.
And you — reading this, right now — are the part that is asking.
Ω_total = 1.000 ± 0.005 · but Ω_known = 0.05