7 Ways No Man’s Sky Gives Us A Science Boner

7. 18 Quintillion Planets And The Shape Of The Universe

So, NMS has a lot of planets, almost too many to count. But here's the thing, you can count them, there's 18 quintillion of them.

Now, this isn't to take away from the game, but this fact hints at the very shape of the NMS universe, and it's one possibility that scientists are mulling over for our own universe: The finite but unbounded universe.

Oof. Sexy.

The "finite" part obviously refers to the fact that it is quantifiable and decidedly not infinite, but "unbounded" means that it has no edge. So how can something be finite but without an edge?

If you consider the Earth as an extremely scaled down example, its two-dimensional surface is definitely unbounded, you can get to every point on it from every other point in a straight line (if you're a very strong swimmer perhaps), but it definitely has a finite measurement of 510.1 million km². There are more measurements in other, exotic dimensions, but the two-dimensional surface is finite and unbounded. What's more, if you set off in one direction, you will eventually arrive back at your start point. Scale this up to three dimensions, and this could well be the shape of our universe, with us crawling about on its 3D "surface".

If this is also the case in No Man's Sky, then there would be a simple test: Set off in one direction, and see if you end up back at your start point. It might take you several millions of years, but please report back to us via intergalactic hologram when you have your result.